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The city manager and the City Council will attempt to iron out differences in funding proposals this afternoon before approving Berkeley’s $449 million two-year budget at a special council meeting.

The council is bound by the City Charter to adopt a budget prior to the June 30 close of the fiscal year.

The proposed budget does not cut funding to any existing programs or departments except the Berkeley Housing Authority where reductions are required to address a budget deficit of $300,000. In fact, some programs, which were given priority status by the council, will receive increased funding.

High on the council’s list of priorities were safety issues including police staffing, the Hills Fire Station construction and disaster preparedness. Other priorities include energy conservation, response to health disparities, the Live Oak Park Recreation Center and the Eastshore Park Plan.

The proposed two-year budget is about $22 million more than the previous biennial budget. It is larger than projected revenues by about $5 million for fiscal year 2001-2002 and $18 million for the following year.

Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz said the discrepancies are within normal ranges because the proposed budget cannot reflect some grants and funds carried over from previous years, which should make up the shortfalls in revenue projections.

Mayor Shirley Dean and Councilmember Dona Spring have both submitted

proposals that differ slightly from the city manager’s.

“There’s not a lot of difference in the city manager’s budget and the proposals from the mayor and Councilmember Spring. We should be able to tweak it just enough to get agreement,” Kamlarz said.

For example, the mayor proposed $48,000 for the Healthy Start Program at Rosa Parks school, while Spring proposed $34,000 for the program. The city manager put $48,000 for the program into his budget proposal. Dean proposed $143,000 for arts grants, while Spring proposed $70,000. The city manager wrote $100,000 into his proposed budget for arts grants.

After receiving recommendations from councilmembers on June 12, and hearing requests from several organizations at a public budget hearing last Tuesday, the city manager made adjustments to his proposal on Monday.

To help close the gap between proposals and requests from organizations, he added about $51,000 of funding for various nonprofit programs including the Tinkers’ Workshop, Through the Looking Glass and the Young Artists’ Workshop.

The city manager’s budget includes one-time funding of $1.6 million for anticipated payouts of sick time to public safety personal who are expected to retire in the coming year under the newly negotiated 3 Percent at 50 Program, which allows police and fire personnel to retire at age 50 and collect 3 percent of their salary for every year they were employed by the city, according to Kamlarz.

“About 40 percent of the police department will be eligible to retire in the coming year and we don’t know how many are going to take the option,” he said.

An increase to a recurring program is $900,000 to the citywide response to the energy crisis and $400,000 for Fire Department overtime.

Kamlarz said there has been extraordinary agreement between the councilmembers and the city manager this year. He said part of the reason is the early priority setting sessions that took place in March.

“The last budget was the first time we used the priority setting process and this time it worked much better,” he said. “I think we learned a lot from our mistakes.”

Councilmember Mim Hawley agreed. “This is my first budget, but from what I’m hearing this one is going relatively smoothly,” she said. “But of course we still have to get through tomorrow’s meeting.”

Hawley said the budget is a good one that reflects the local character. “I’m considered fiscally responsible and I have to say there are an awful lot of good funding proposals for nonprofits in the arts and for programs that help seniors and the disabled,” she said. “This budget reflects the people of Berkeley.”

The tone of your 6-21 lead article "Pedestrian death…" is distressingly familiar. A vehicle inflicted death is countered with calls for pedestrian protection, sidewalk safety, etc. No apparent thought that the emphasis is skewed, that Jayne Ash was simply crossing a street, her safety supposedly assured by the traffic signal; that she suffered death for no greater fault than an insufficiently developed sense of traffic paranoia. How naïve; she actually seemed to think that cities are primarily for people, that a green light signaled her safety.

The driver who hurled her into death simply rolled through the intersection, not even aware that he had snuffed the existence of a lovely, vibrant young woman. And we; how odd that we simply accept her death as though it had been inflicted by lightning strike or earthquake, rather than by a bumbling behemouth of commerce.

Can we observe Jayne’s death by no more significant action than a rather mild request for improved safety, for some sort of assurance that we may negotiate our streets without fear of death? Why is there no anger, no rising outrage at such an incident?

For several days after her death the corner outside Berkeley Espresso bore flowers; the pole that supports the (ineffectual) traffic signals carried messages of love and grief. The flowers faded, withered, were swept away. Will our bland, meek acceptance condemn her to a random, meaningless death? Is our love and grief so miniscule we can do no better than this?

Why do we tolerate these juggernauts on our streets? How difficult would it be to implement a loading dock in the industrial sector of town to load and unload these freeway monsters, a fleet of shuttles to deliver to and from retailers?

Ah but the cost, proclaim the politicos. Yes, the cost. The first installment might come from the funds already allocated for downtown parking.

Supposedly still under discussion, we hear. Anyone doubt the outcome of that discussion. And if a hole is dug under the city park on MLK to store empty automobiles, history informs us that two years later the same cry will be raised: more parking is needed, or we will strangle our downtown merchants

But the contemporary news from Florida and other east coast locales indicates excluding cars revitalizes business; not more but less parking seems the key to merchant health.

Not to mention the health of the rest of us. We all want to travel in our private capsules, separated from our fellows by an aggregate of 3 tons of steel; we all want to abandon them at will, without endless prowling for parking. Could Jayne Ash’s death be telling us that we are all wrong?

Could our politicians but hear my voice as clearly as they do the mercantile forces to which they seem endlessly subservient, we would exclude monster vehicles from the streets we send our children out to negotiate. There would be a terminal outside our residential areas, and it would be named the Jayne Ash Memorial Truck Transport Terminus.

Donald Schweter

Berkeley

Pedestrian crossings: a daily drama

Editor:

Regarding your front page story of June 21, (vol.3 issue 62). Once again (c.f. March 28 vol. 2 issue 297) you have done a public service by keeping current on the deplorable lack of police acting to stop drivers who run red lights and who speed up when nearing pedestrian crossings to avoid having to stop for people crossing the street – if indeed they DO stop.

If you are looking for excitement there is no need to go to some bloody shoot-em-in-the-face-etc.-movie, just sit near the pedestrian crossing between the French Hotel and the Post Office across the street on Shattuck Ave. and watch the hits and near misses of potential killer drivers.

KEEP HOPE ALIVE ....that some day pedestrians will be safe in Berkeley,

Max Stec

Berkeley

McVeigh shows there’s a moral crisis in U.S.

Editor:

Yes! He was a murderer, but he was also a decorated-for-bravery soldier who was trained to kill and he applied what he learned to do a terrible, inexcusable and unthinkable thing.

But it was his ghastly, lethal way to respond to what he saw as inexcusable federal government violence in Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge in Idaho against women, children and the elderly.

Neither Timothy McVeigh nor anyone else saw or sees what the news starting on April 19, 1995, as a case of an American terrorist waging war against a rogue nation; a nation that sent 58,168 young American GI’s to fight and die in tiny Vietnam for what? A nation whose school children, it’s no exaggeration to point out, teach their teachers a lesson by shooting them between their eyes when confronted by a rule that’s not to their liking, or pair up to conduct a massacre that includes themselves as two did at Columbine High School in Colorado?

One retired professor of social ethics and philosophy at a school of theology in Missouri writes that “most U.S. citizens accept their government’s view of ‘rogue states’ because the major news media parrot the Pentagon’s point of view.

However, in nearly every case of suspected terrorism (in much of the world), the United States was in fact the original aggressor, using its own form of aggression to which the ‘rogue states’ were responding.”

If we as a nation cannot now take Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words seriously when he says, in New York’s Riverside Church in 1967.

“The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that they, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat.

The image of America will never again be the image of violence and militarism,” and act on those words.

The lesson to be learned from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing will not have been heeded, and we’ll sadly be forced to say that the 168 lives of innocent children, women and men, and obviously, as well as bafflingly guilty Timothy McVeigh’s were lost in vain.

Our Missouri theologian believes; “Everyone, including Americans, would benefit from a prosperous, peaceful world.” And to his question “is this likely to ever happen?” he says, “not until the citizens and government officials of the United States put aside our collective ego at being a ‘superpower’ and seek for others the goals and values we seek for ourselves”.

Hear this from the Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Detroit, Thomas J. Gumbleton “the evil we are evoking is the end of the world and the loss of our souls. Confronting this is the greatest spiritual question of our time.”

We need to seek, listen, speak out and act! We need to condemn President Bush’s condemnation of the ABM treaty and promise of a wider discredited missile shield.

When 673 law professors from 137 law schools in the United States declare that the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to stop the recount of votes in Florida last December intentionally acted as political proponents for candidate Bush, not as ethical judges, we need to be aware that there’s a moral crisis in the U.S.A. that needs to be addressed.

Al Williams

Oakland

653-4012

Dear Editor,

Recently returned to our regular world of ups and downs and smooth and rough roads, I want to share some thoughts from my last six months of separateness and sadness.

I am grateful that it lasted only six months as compared to a previous eighteen month period. I am grateful that I had already learned the value of medication and did not resisnt too long the need for change.

I benefited from the loving patience and concern of my family and a few close friends and from the professional and library resourses of Kaiser Permanente Mediacal Center. I benefited from The Zen Path through Depression by Philip Martin, a gift from one of my sons. I benefited from a part time job which pays me to walk, that most heathy of physical activities.

I know the City of Berkeley and Alta Bates Mediacal Center have Mental Health Services and the Berkeley Public Library has books on the subject.

Even as I found myself increasingly unable to want to be with people, I clung tenuously to some kind of prayer life and some kind of worship. One of my ministers sent me the following poem by May Sarton. Consider it my “glad to be back” greeting to all of you.

HOPEFUL GARDENERS

Help us to be the always hopeful

Gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness

Nothing comes to birth

As without light

Nothing flowers

Bill Trampleasure

Berkeley

Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole

Tuesday June 26, 2001

Tuesday, June 26

Saranel Benjamin of

Globalization

7 p.m.

Oakland YMCA

1515 Webster Street, Oakland

Saranel Benjamin, trade unionist from South Africa, will discuss the impact of corporate globalization on South African workers. Sponsored by Berkeley’s Women of Color Resource Center.

848-9272

Berkeley Camera Club

7:30 p.m.

Northbrae Community Church

941 The Alameda

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips.

Call Don, 525-3565

Redistricting Hearing

7 - 9 p.m.

South Berkeley Senior Center

2939 Ellis Street

Part of the last week of redistricting hearings for 2001. Hosted by Supervisor Keith Carson.

272-6695

Wednesday, June 27

Conversations in Commedia

7:30 p.m.

La Pena

3105 Shattuck Ave.

The series pairs radical theater “elders” to share memories of their years in Commedia. This week with former Mime Troupe actress Audrey Smith and Ladies Against Women character Selma Spector. $6 - $8.

849-2568

Disaster Council

7 p.m.

Emergency Operations Center

997 Cedar Street

Update on Measure G.

644-8736

Socratic Circle Discussion

5 p.m.

Cafe Electica

1309 Solano Avenue

Gather for espresso and discussion at the “green” teen cafe. Open to all. Free.

527-2344

Thursday, June 28

Quit Smoking Class

6 - 8 p.m.

South Berkeley Senior Center

2939 Ellis Street

A six week quit smoking class. Free to Berkeley residents and employees.

Meet with East Bay job seekers while listening to music by DJ and Emcee Marty Nemko. Also, cash bar, free hors d’oeurves, and prize giveaways. Free and open to the public. Call 251-1401.

www.eastbaytechjobs.com/mixer/

Take the Terror Out

of Talking!

Noon to 1:30 p.m.

California Dept. of Health Services

2151 Berkeley Way

Room 804

Open house at State Health Toastmasters Club to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Free. 649-7750

Friday, June 29

Living Philosophers

10 a.m. - Noon

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Hear and entertain the ideas of some modern day philosophers: Jacob Needleman, J. Revel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty and others. Every Friday except holidays. Facilitated by H.D. Moe.

Therapy for Trans Partners

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Center for Human Growth

2712 Telegraph Ave.

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522

Strong Women: Arts, Herstory

and Literature

1:15 - 3:15 p.m.

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program.

Call 549-2970

Carefree/Carfree Tour

3 p.m.

Sather Gate

UC Berkeley

Telegraph at Bancroft

Walking tour from Sather Gate to People’s Park entitled “Berkeley in the Sixties.” Led by Free Speech veterans and Berkeley residents Kate Coleman and Michael Rossman, the tour will include important locations and discussions of the Free Speech movement, the Vietnam Day Committee, the rise of affirmative action, and other events and movements. Free. 486-04 11

Copwatch workshop: Learn what your rights are when dealing with the police. Special section on juvenile rights. 548-0425

Bay Area Eco-Crones

11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

1066 Creston Road

Networking, information sharing, project planning and ritual.

Call ahead, 874-4935.

Sunday, July 1

Buddhist Psychology

6 p.m.

Tibetan Nyingma Institute

1815 Highland Place

Annette Anderson on “Insights from Buddhist Psychology.” Free.

843-6812

Jazz on the Pier

11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Berkeley Pier

The Christy Dana Quartet performs on the Berkeley Pier at the foot of University Ave. and Seawall Dr. The CDQ ensemble led by trumpeter and jazz educator Christy Dana with the Bay as a backdrop. Bring your folding chairs, sunblock and jackets. Free.

AC Transit Bus 51M

649-3929

Music and Meditation

8 - 9 p.m.

The Heart-Road Traveller

1828 Euclid Avenue

Group meditation using instrumental music and devotional songs. Free.

496-3468

Monday, July 2

James Joyce Conference

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Clark Kerr Campus

2601 Warring Street

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panels on Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, and Joyce in the Classroom. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25.

642-2754

Tuesday, July 3

Berkeley Camera Club

7:30 p.m.

Northbrae Community Church

941 The Alameda

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips.

Call Don, 525-3565

James Joyce Conference

9 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Clark Kerr Campus

2601 Warring Street

Part of a week-long conference entitled “Extreme Joyce/Readings On the Edge.” Today includes panel on Finnegans Wake as well as looking at issues such as Joyce and carnality, computers, border-crossings, and cinema. From 4 - 5:30 p.m. workshops and reading groups on Teaching Joyce. $15 - $25.

Bring your family for an exciting day. Picnic on great international food, hit the beach, take a free sailboat ride, get your face painted or a massage. Decorate your bike at the Shorebird Nature Center and participate in the Decorated Bicycle Parade at 7 p.m. Visit Madame Ovary’s egg puppets and Adventure Playground all day or the Wacky Art Cars. Dance to Southbound or Zambombazo 2-5 p.m.; Bird Legg and the Tite Fit Blues Band 5-7 p.m.; Kollasuyo 5-7 p.m.; MotorDude Zydeco 7-9 p.m. Fireworks at dusk. No personal fireworks allowed. An alcohol-free event. Cars in by 7 p.m. when street closes to traffic, out only after 10 p.m. Free admission. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley.

548-5335

Berkeley Communicator Toastmasters Club

7:15 a.m.

Vault Cafe

3250 Adeline

Learn to speak with confidence. Ongoing first and third Wednesdays each month.

This summer’s 40th anniversary of the Bay Area’s champion of avant-garde film art, the San Francisco Cinematheque, will be celebrated with screenings of selected favorite films at the San Francisco Art Institute and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Joining in the anniversary will be the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, which will show a special program of experimental films, circa 1967.

Tonight at 7:30, the PFA will screen films by Bruce Baillie (“Castro Street”), Stan Brakhage (“Songs 6,7,8 and 16”), Bruce Conner (“A Movie”), Robert Nelson (“Oh Dem Watermelons”), and Jud Talmut (“Turn Turn Turn”). This program is significant because it is a re-creation of a film program 34 years ago, at a pivotal time in S.F. Cinematheque history.

First, we have to go back a few years further, to 1960.

Bruce Baillie was an artist discovering film, living rent-free in a room in Canyon. “I had no occupation,” he said in a 1989 interview. “I couldn’t get a job anywhere. So, I thought, I’ll invent my own occupation.” He landed a job at Safeway to pay for a projector, set up an Army surplus screen in his backyard, and began to hold weekly screenings of his films, his friends’ films, and just about anything made of celluloid that he could thread through the projector. He called it “Canyon Cinema.”

The screenings slowly became more popular, at a time when the avant-garde community became more and more at risk. This is the era when Michael McClure’s risqué stage production of “The Beard” was nightly raided by police in San Francisco’s North Beach, when Jack Smith’s campy romp film “Flaming Creatures” couldn’t be legally screened in New York City, and when Lenny Bruce’s obscenity battles began. The climate was frowning upon those on the fringe.

“This was prerevolution times,” Baillie recalled. “Berkeley was quite conservative in the early ’60s. They just didn’t like the spirit of it.” With his partner Chick Strand he began holding screenings of local work and feature-length narrative films at a variety of places around the Bay Area, wherever a host would have them.

As the community of filmmakers surrounding Baillie’s screenings grew and their energy gained momentum, they realized Canyon could evolve into a distribution organization. In 1966 Filmmaker Robert Nelson spearheaded an effort to found an organization modeled after a New York City distribution co-operative called Filmmaker’s Co-operative. The Canyon distribution co-op was designed to safely and cost-effectively get films into screening venues that would have them. “Your films are made of love,” Nelson wrote in the Canyon newsletter, “Cinemanews.” “Don’t put them into the hands of people who are in the business of selling love.”

Which brings us to 1967, when Edith Kramer was hired as the manager of the Canyon Co-op. The organization had just moved into the basement offices of a desanctified church on Union Street in San Francisco and Kramer noticed the unused space above. She got the idea to exhibit films in the church.

Tonight’s film program at the Pacific Film Archive represents the first film series – named “Canyon Cinematheque” – at the then-newly opened Intersection Theater.

In the coming years, Canyon Cinematheque and the distribution co-op would split. Edith Kramer would eventually become the director of the Pacific Film Archive, and Canyon Cinematheque would become San Francisco Cinematheque.

Kramer said she is proud to have been a part of Canyon. “Not much has survived from the ’60s,” she said of Canyon’s longevity. “It’s vital.”

Tonight’s re-visiting of the 1967 program shows a body of work that attests to the serious technical and emotional intent of film artists. Bruce Baillie’s “Castro Street” was lauded in art and film circles as a tour de force of filmmaking virtuosity in the service of cinematic poetry.

A 10-minute film of images gathered from a train-switching yard in Richmond (not the Castro Street of Gay Pride fame), “Castro Street” uses abstractions of overlapping and image matting to achieve a metaphysical consciousness. In Baillie’s words, “the strength or conflict of becoming.”

Filmmaker Larry Booth wrote to Canyon’s Cinemanews in 1967: “Although most would deny it, many films are technique games, that is, the art of the technical. In the case of “Castro Street,” the images appear to be very carefully thought out and techniques used only as an instrument to bring them to the viewer. This is as it should be.”

When U.S. District Judge William Orrick uttered these words in December 1999, demanding that the San Francisco school district stop taking race into consideration when it assigned students to schools, school board members in Berkeley took notice.

The first public school system in the country to voluntarily desegregate in 1968, Berkeley Unified has long had policies in place to ensure that the racial diversity at each individual school site very nearly approximates the racial diversity of the district’s total enrollment; in other words, policies that take race “into consideration” when assigning students to schools.

This is how it came to be, for example, that both Cragmont and Washington elementary schools – schools located in neighborhoods with very different demographics – had student bodies that were 28 percent white in the 1999-2000 school year.

Or how Emerson Elementary school came to have, in that same year, an enrollment that was 42 percent African American and 27 percent white, despite being located at some distance from neighborhoods where African American households are numerous.

Berkeley Unified’s latest desegregation policy, put in place in the mid-’90s, assigns students to schools so that the percentage of white, African American and “Other Ethnicity” students at each school comes within 5 percent of matching the districtwide percentages for these categories.

It could be argued that such a policy is illegal. And the argument may be made sooner rather than later.

Catherine James, associate superintendent of support services for the district, said at least one conservative legal group has made inquiries that could indicate it is considering bringing a case against the Berkeley district.“We are so outspoken about our desire to have a desegregated district,” James said. “We could be a likely target.”

Adding to the district’s anxieties is the fact that they fall under the jurisdiction of the very U.S. district court where Orrick handed down his 1999 decision. There are differences between the San Francisco district and the Berkeley District of course, but still...

Last spring, anticipating the day when a federal judge said to them: “It’s showtime,” the district moved to appoint representatives from each of its elementary and middle schools to a Student Assignment Advisory Committee. The committee was charged with beginning to look at alternative student assignment policies that do not take race “into consideration.”

But after meeting several times and soliciting public input, the committee reported back to the district late last year with its conclusion: keep the current policy. The committee essentially determined that racial integration of schools is so popular in Berkeley that the district ought to be ready to take a stand in court before it considers changing the policy, James said.

The board didn’t exactly agree. So, in a compromise of sorts, the committee has spent the last six months further exploring student assignment policies that could promote diverse schools without explicitly taking race into consideration, while it simultaneously looked at ways to make the district’s current policy more legally defensible.

It presented its most recent findings at last week’s school board meeting.

The board might base student assignment on student’s socio-economic status rather than on race, and achieve a similar diversifying effect, the committee argued. But it could also do so if it found that socio-economic diversity was desirable in and of itself. Any policy whose goal is to maintain racial diversity, whether it does so by use of “racial quotas” or not, is unlikely to stand up in court, according to Advisory Committee Co-chair Derick Miller, incoming president of Berkeley’s PTA Council.

Furthermore, there are inherent difficulties in the socio-economic approach, Miller said, such as finding reliable ways to determine students’ household income.

In terms of defending the district’s current policy, the committee presented statistical information to the board that could begin to make a compelling case that education resources are spread equally among Berkeley schools, and that the quality of education the schools provide is also largely equal.

According to board Director Joaquin Rivera, there are some legal precedents that suggest public school districts can get away with using race in student assignment policies so long as no ethnic group can make the case that it is harmed by such a policy, as might be the case if the policy increased the likelihood that children of a particular ethnicity were assigned to an inferior school.

“In Berkeley, no student in the district would be harmed if he’s assigned to ‘x’ school instead of ‘y’ school,” Rivera said.

In the months ahead, the Student Advisory Assignment Committee will continue to compile statistics related to the “equity” of Berkeley schools, including statistics on student achievement, after school programs, and parent education levels.

Sundays are usually pretty crowded at Wat Mongkolratanaram, Berkeley’s Thai Buddhist temple, but this Sunday there were more people than usual.

After 25 years at 1911 Russell St. – where on Sundays Thai cooks donate and serve traditional food at affordable prices to raise money for the temple – the Thai community unveiled and dedicated its newly-renovated temple.

“We’re celebrating our 25th year in the Bay Area,” said Doug Coffee, a temple volunteer who lives in Fairfax. “We bought an old Victorian home and got permission from the city to upgrade it. We have spent over $600,000 in renovating this house and making it the way it looks right now.”

In January 1999, the city approved the temple’s petition to substantially renovate the building, so it could be made an authentic ubosoth, or Buddhist temple of worship. The renovations were completed this year.

The house’s look from the outside is ornate with gold adornments that front the peaks of this Victorian, and are probably not what the original designer envisioned.

But out on Russell Street – with people walking their dogs and toting their Sunday morning coffee, wondering what all the excitement is about and finding young, luminous Thai monks wrapped in bright or burnt orange saffron to tell them – somehow everything seems to fit.

“You see a lot of people here today, all the parking out front’s gone, and it’s all for this celebration of the 25th year,” Coffee said. “We’ve got the high ambassador from Washington coming here today. The mayor of Berkeley will be here today. Members of the Thai embassy in L.A. will be here today.”

Coffee estimated that there are more than 60,000 Thai people in the Bay Area. “At one time or another everybody comes to this temple,” Coffee said.

Congregants and visitors filed into chairs set beneath a tent for the outdoor ceremony, and after the ribbon cutting. There was Thai classical dance, authentic traditional food and desserts, and lots of liveliness throughout the day.

Alison McKleroy said she thought the day’s festivities were terrific, but not so unlike the other Sundays she’s come to the temple.

“The place is always full and kind of magical,” McKleroy said. “I’ve been coming here for six or seven years. They have this every Sunday, and it’s the best Thai food in the Bay Area.”

It’s usually a word of mouth sort of thing, McKleroy said.

“It’s always fun to ask other people, ‘How did you hear about the Thai temple?’ You’re always introduced by a friend, and as soon as you come, you want to take all your friends and at the same time, keep it a secret.”

There are other opportunities, Coffee said, for members of the public to gain something from what the temple offers.

“They teach Thai every Sunday and they teach the children how to dance,” Coffee said. “We have classes going all year round, and the teachers are all volunteers.”

Though most of the people you’d see at the Thai Buddhist temple on any given Sunday are volunteers or visitors, you’ll also find its modest leaders walking around quickly and gently, smiling.

“The monks are the leaders of the temple,” Coffee said.

The five monks who presently reside at the temple live in the small, garagelike buildings out behind it. Their stomachs are usually as bare as their heads, since their daily fast begins every day at noon and lasts until the next morning.

Sunday is the day they lead the Thai Buddhist community in religious celebration. The feast every Sunday, to which all are invited, is a way of welcome.

SAN DIEGO — “Golden rice” has come to represent all the hopes and fears about biotechnology, but despite all the controversy, not a single genetically engineered rice seed has been planted in the ground, its inventors said Monday.

It will probably take another five to 10 years before poor subsistence farmers can begin growing the crop in large amounts, and that’s “if everything goes right,” said Ronald Cantrell, executive director of the International Rice Research Institute.

Its many proponents see the rice, infused with two daffodil genes and a bacteria gene to add vitamin A, as a panacea for starving populations in developing nations where rice is a staple.

Traditional rice lacks vitamin A, and as many as two million children die each year because of vitamin A deficiencies. Another 500,000 go blind.

Biotechnology researchers say genetic engineering is the only practical way to fortify the rice.

“It was clear from the beginning that biotech was needed instead of typical crop breeding,” Swiss plant cell professor Peter Beyer, one of the two inventors of golden rice, said Monday at the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization conference.

“No rice anywhere has vitamin A.”

Opponents call it science run amok. They say no plants should be genetically changed to include elements of other organisms, and particularly not rice. Once the plants are released into the environment, cross-pollination with traditional rice could have unpredictable long-term impacts on the food billions of people eat every day.

“The purported benefits of golden rice are completely fabricated,” said Brian Tokar, a member of Biojustice, a group opposed to genetic engineering.

“The way to cure blindness and hunger should not come from big agribusiness,” he said.

Still others praise the science but say the distribution system is flawed — that governments and nonprofit agencies are too big and bureaucratic to properly handle getting the seeds to poor farmers once the product is perfected.

Villoo Morawala-Patel, who owns an India biotech start-up that works on the aroma of Indian rice, says golden rice’s keepers should turn to companies like hers to help distribute the seeds.

Still, Beyer and other major supporters of the rice cautioned that years of fine-tuning must be done before poor subsistence farmers will be able to use it on a wide scale.

Today, golden rice is grown only in a few greenhouses, including at the Rice Research Institute’s headquarters in the Philippines.

“Golden rice is still in the developmental stages and a lot of work is still needed to get into the fields,” said Sivramiah Shantharam, a spokesman for Syngenta, which owns the commercial rights to the rice.

First order of business: engineering the rice to survive in the tropical climates where it can benefit the most, such as Asia, which grows 500 million tons of traditional rice annually.

Right now, the golden rice can only grow in temperate climates such as California’s.

Cantrell said it will probably take three years for the research institute to develop a rice that can grow in the Philippines.

Beyer and co-inventor Ingo Potrykus also are working on genetically fortifying the rice with iron and vitamin E.

Critics argue that even vitamin-fortified rice will come nowhere close to easing the world’s hunger pains, and that people would need to eat dozens of pounds of golden rice a day to meet their daily vitamin needs.

Consequently, the two European scientists are also having problems raising the needed capital to continue their work. Public funding in Europe also is dwindling in part because of the outcry there over genetically modified foods.

“Elected officials are quite reluctant to fund us,” Beyer said.

So Beyer has turned some of his attention to private companies, partnering recently with Syngenta, which agreed to allow governments and nonprofit agencies to freely distribute golden rice throughout the poorest countries.

Syngenta hopes to generate its profits in industrialized countries such as the United States, if the rice meets regulatory approval.

Beyer is meeting with other scientists this week to prepare a pitch for more research money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Currently, the Rockefeller Foundation funds Beyer’s work and has promised to do so for the next 18 months, he said.

Outside the convention center Monday, police outnumbered protesters. The crowd of protesters listening to music, dancing and performing street theater numbered no more than 50 — at times even less.

Elsewhere, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals staged a protest at a Burger King restaurant in the nearby city of Mira Mesa.

Police there also outnumbered the 80 protesters who turned up. Two demonstrators were arrested after they stood on the counter and made speeches.

A special legislative budget committee approved a $101 billion spending plan early Saturday, after three weeks of intense negotiations among Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis’ office.

Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, said the Senate plans to take up the budget Tuesday night, followed by the Assembly on Wednesday. Department of Finance officials say they plan a bill signing by week’s end.

Legislative leaders say at least one of the GOP issues – the transportation compromise – may be quickly resolved.

Davis and a legislative budget committee agreed to defer for two years a plan to use gas tax revenues for transportation programs. Instead, $2.5 billion over the next two budget years would flow into the general fund to help make up for sagging revenues.

Republicans say they will only agree to diverting the fund if Democrats agree to ask voters to require that the gasoline tax revenues be used for streets, highways and transit projects in the future.

“That transportation issue could be worth discussing,” Burton said.

More divisive, however, is the quarter-cent sales tax cut that is automatically triggered when the state’s treasury is full.

GOP lawmakers said they will not vote for a budget that fails to preserve that quarter-cent sales tax cut, which went into effect in January.

State law automatically triggers the cut if the reserves remain above 4 percent of the state budget for two years in a row.

The budget approved by the committee assumes the quarter-cent cut will end in January and bring in $600 million to the state in the 2001-02 fiscal year.

Another of the Republicans budget issues, the level of the state’s rainy-day fund, has been resolved. GOP lawmakers called for larger reserves than the $1.1 billion Davis called for in his May budget revision.

Davis increased that request to $2.5 billion to $3 billion after analysts reported that the state could be strapped with billions in deficits in two years.

In response, the committee trimmed new spending proposals in education, foster care and health programs to set aside $2.2 billion.

On the Net: See various budget summaries at www.lao.ca.gov and www.dof.ca.gov

Efforts to settle claims from the California power crisis got under way Monday, as Western states accused power-generating companies of overcharging them by $15 billion in the past year.

Michael Kahn, California’s chief negotiator, said the $9 billion in refunds his state claims it is owed should be the first order of business for Curtis L. Wagner, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s chief administrative law judge, who is serving as mediator for the talks.

“We want our refunds. We want them now,” said Kahn, chairman of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid.

Other Western states, mainly in the Pacific Northwest, said overcharges to them amount to $6 billion.

The states claim that the companies unfairly drove up prices to take advantage of a power shortage. Prices frequently surpassed $300 a megawatt-hour, ten times what they were in 1999. One megawatt is enough to power about 750 homes.

The power companies argue that the charges were justified.

In some cases, older, more costly power plants were pressed into service to deal with the high demand and tight supply.

Wagner, who has said that refunds in any settlement probably would not exceed $2.5 billion, urged all sides to be conciliatory.

He said a brokered settlement should be preferable to a plan crafted by federal regulators.

He said he was not discouraged by the states’ hard line in the early going. “Everybody has to stick to their guns for a while,” Wagner said after the first day of talks.

More than 150 people representing about six dozen entities gathered in a government hearing room for negotiations.

The talks were part of a federal order last week extending price controls on spot power sales in California and imposing limits in 10 other Western states.

Wagner laid out several issues negotiators will have to tackle, including how much generators are owed for power they supplied to California without getting paid.

The size of the refunds and the unpaid bills “must be, both ways, resolved at the outset to put everyone on the same playing field,” Wagner said. Any settlement probably would also have to answer whether the generators should have immunity from existing and future lawsuits, as well as prosecution, he said.

Other issues on the table include:

— Additional long-term power contracts, reducing the amount of power California would have to purchase on the volatile spot market.

— The independence of the board that governs the Independent System Operator.

— The bankruptcy of Pacific Gas & Electric.

Wagner wore a gray business suit and sat among the parties, foregoing both his robes and his seat on the dais, to emphasize his role as a broker in the talks.

Reporters sat in on Wagner’s opening statement and a marathon introduction in which some 150 people stated their names and their employers.

“If we had known there would be so many people here, we would have sold tickets,” Wagner said.

The attendees included representatives from California and a dozen city and county governments, investor-owned and municipal utilities, power generators and natural gas companies.

After the introductions, Wagner closed the meeting to the public, ordering the participants not to talk to reporters during the negotiations. He even pledged to shred his copy of the notes that a court reporter will transcribe each day.

FERC mandated that the talks last no more than 15 days. Wagner can request more time if he feels progress is being made.

AVILA BEACH — A 12-year fight is over for a handful of residents bent on sparing this once-doomed 50-acre oasis on the central California coast from oblivion.

In its heyday, the village of Avila Beach attracted beachgoers and tourists by the thousands with its Bohemian charm and sun-soaked sands.

But lurking beneath the enclave was a spreading petroleum plume from damaged oil pipelines that threatened the health and safety of its 350 residents.

The village had to be destroyed in 1999 to save it.

Now, the three-block-long, three-block-wide town is rising from the goo — thanks to the perseverance of a handful of people who battled a stymied bureaucracy to get their town back.

“Avila really got cleaned up because of about four or five people who were real tenacious,” said Peg Pinard, the San Luis Obispo County supervisor who deserves much of the credit for pinning down the bureaucrats.

The entire commercial beachfront was demolished in 1999, a decade after it was learned that a 400,000-gallon petroleum plume bulged beneath the town. Before being decommissioned, the Unocal pipelines carried up to 2 million barrels of oil a month from hillside tanks to wharf tankers.

After the discovery, it took a decade for Unocal to work out legal settlements with business owners and bureaucrats clearing the way for relocations and demolition. The $18 million agreement also paid for community service and recreation projects to benefit remaining residents.

No one questioned the solution: The town had to go.

“There was no other way to save it. They had to tear it down,” Pinard said. But many in the community weren’t interested in bidding farewell with a Unocal buyout.

Dig down 30 feet, scoop away the contamination and replace it with clean sand and terra firma, they said. They wanted to rebuild and resume the role as a beach tourist destination 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

“I knew that it needed help and I’m a fighter. I could see people weren’t being treated fairly,” said Pinard. Her brow still furls at the mention of state roadblocks that led to delay after delay after delay.

The California Coastal Commission was the toughest. Battles centered on parking, road closures, the boardwalk, and apartments over stores on Front Street.

Reconstruction was ready to begin, with businesses expecting to reopen this summer, when state fire authorities stalled it further because they wouldn’t sign off on building permits because there wasn’t enough water pressure to fight a fire.

Then, the activists battled the state Department of Fish and Game over construction of a new water tank for fire suppression.

“It was 12 years of excruciating and painful work,” said McLaren, who steers the Front Street Enhancement Committee.

Beachgoers now sprawl thigh-to-thigh on bleach-white sand imported from the Santa Maria River bed and wander the palm-lined concrete boardwalk dividing the sand and what will be the Front Street business district.

At the moment, there’s nowhere to get a burger, fries or a beer. The closest watering holes are The Olde Port Inn and Fat Cats, about a mile down the road in Port San Luis.

But there is a park on the western edge of town and a 996-space parking lot is walking distance from the sand.

“The weather is always nice here, nice and sunny,” said vacationing sun-worshipper Norma Conner of the San Bernardino County community of Mentone.

She has migrated to Avila Beach for years and admits she doesn’t really miss the rustic Front Street shops. But she’s looking forward to the new structures rising from a pit nearby.

The Avila Beach population of 350 is now about 119.

“Two-thirds of the people took the (relocation) money and left,” said Seamus Slattery, chairman of the Avila Valley Advisory Committee.

Although six to nine months late, sand has been broken on some businesses.

The foundation for Beachcomber Bill’s is already in place and owner Bill Price expects to open next spring.

The Sea Barn, Custom House and Mr. Rick’s Bar and Grill are returning to Front Street and the San Luis Yacht Club is now at the foot of the pier. A 53-room hotel is on the drawing board.

“I think the town is going to develop in stages,” Pinard said. “I think we are going to end up with a beautiful little place here.”

Some old-timers are concerned the rebirth could bring congestion with too many tourists overwhelming the place.

“They are very anxious to get back in business and a businessman wants a steady business. But you want people to come in waves, not in tsunamis,” she said.

UNITED NATIONS — One after another, African leaders at the United Nations’ first global gathering on HIV/AIDS made emotional pleas for help Monday in ending the devastation wrought by the epidemic. Nigeria’s president warned that entire populations face extinction.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, seeking $7-10 billion for a global AIDS fund, said AIDS spending “in the developing world needs to rise to roughly five times its present level.” The Americans pledged to provide more aid, but did not say how much.

Annan, a native of Ghana who has made the fight against AIDS his personal priority, opened the three-day special session by urging world leaders to set aside moral judgments and face the unpleasant facts of a disease that has killed 22 million people and ravaged many of the world’s poorest nations.

Kenya and Nigeria are each home to more than 2 million HIV patients. In Botswana, more than 20 percent of the adult population is infected, and in South Africa, AIDS will knock off 17 years of life expectancy by 2005.

“The future of our continent is bleak, to say the least,” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said. “The prospect of extinction of the entire population of a continent looms larger and larger.”

Obasanjo and others called for “total cancellation of Africa’s debt,” which takes badly needed money away from health and social programs including the fight against AIDS.

“The undeniable fact is that with the fragility of our economies, we simply lack the capacity to adequately respond to the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” the Nigerian leader said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, leading the U.S. delegation, said more money would come from the United States – which has already pledged $200 million in seed money – “as we learn where our support will be most effective.”

“Our response to AIDS must be no less comprehensive, no less relentless, no less swift than the pandemic itself,” Powell told the General Assembly.

Several speakers, including Powell, acknowledged that the global response to AIDS has been woefully late. Britain’s Clare Short, secretary for international development, went a step further by criticizing the very gathering she addressed.

“We waste too much time and energy in U.N. conferences and special sessions. We use up enormous energy in arguing at great length over texts that provide few if any follow-up mechanisms or assurances that governments and U.N. agencies will carry forward the declarations that are agreed,” she said.

Indeed, the Monday morning session ended in more than two hours of arguments over whether to exclude the U.S.-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission from the conference. Eleven unidentified countries wanted to keep the group out, but Canada led a successful vote in the assembly to include it.

Elsewhere in the building, diplomats squabbled over a final conference document that will map out a global strategy to halt the disease and reverse its effects. Muslim countries and the United States object to language that specifically names vulnerable groups in need of protection, including men who have sex with men.

Noting the weeks of infighting among delegates leading up the gathering, Annan told the 189-nation General Assembly: “We cannot deal with AIDS by making moral judgments or refusing to face unpleasant facts, and still less by stigmatizing those who are infected. We can only do it by speaking clearly and plainly, both about the ways that people become infected, and about what they can to avoid infection.”

But expectations for a successful gathering remained high and varied for many of the 3,000 participants, including health experts, politicians, scientists, AIDS activists and patients working to find an end to the scourge.

Three days of conferences and meetings touch on everything from drug prices to homosexuality, AIDS orphans and funding. Events on Monday included a round-table discussion on prevention and care, a look at how New York City has responded to the epidemic, gender issues relating to AIDS, challenges in rural Africa and the psychological impact of the disease.

To allow some delegates to participate, the United States waived visa restrictions that prevent those with HIV or AIDS from visiting the country.

U.N. radio and an online Webcast will broadcast many of the events around the world in the six official languages of the United Nations — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Two dozen heads of state, mostly from Africa, are attending the General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, though no wealthy nation sent a president or prime minister. Many used their time on the assembly floor to discuss the fund, which Annan expects will be operational by the end of the year.

“It is important for the fund to have criteria that will ensure that resources are used to meet the needs of countries most affected by HIV/AIDS such as my own,” President Festus Mogae of Botswana said.

Uganda, a rare success story among African nations battling the disease, became the first developing nation to give to a global AIDS fund Monday with a $2 million donation. Rates of infection in Uganda have declined by two-thirds since 1993.

Canada added its contribution to those made earlier by the United States, Britain and France, for a total of some $600 million so far.

A study published Friday in the journal Science said the world’s poorest countries will need $9.2 billion a year to deal with AIDS – $4.4 billion to treat people with the illness and $4.8 billion to prevent new infections.

WASHINGTON — A closely divided Supreme Court upheld Watergate-era spending limits on political parties Monday in a decision that supporters said could shore up broader campaign-finance restrictions now before Congress.

The 5-4 ruling affects the money that state and national political parties spend for advertisements, mass mailings and other activities in support of specific candidates.

The ruling does not directly affect the two central goals of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul: to ban “soft money,” the unregulated and unlimited donations that corporations, unions and individuals make to political parties and to put restrictions on the political adds that special interest groups run in the final days of an election.

Still, the court’s reasoning cheered Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and others pressing for wider regulation of political money.

“Clearly, this decision demonstrates that McCain-Feingold restrictions on campaign contributions are constitutional,” he said.

The court rejected the Colorado Republican Party’s contention that government limits on such spending violate the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

Allowing political parties to spend whatever they pleased in support of candidates would open the door to corruption, Justice David Souter wrote for the majority.

The court’s more liberal wing won the vote of center-right Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to prevail. O’Connor’s fellow swing voter, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined the three conservatives, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in dissent.

The court agreed with the Justice Department, which argued that the kind of regulated money at issue in this case, called coordinated expenditures, could be used to flout the federal limits on how much individuals may contribute to candidates.

“Coordinated expenditures of money donated to a party are tailor-made to undermine contribution limits,” Souter wrote.

The term refers to party spending done in concert with a particular campaign but kept separate from the candidate’s coffers.

Largely eclipsed by unregulated soft money, coordinated expenditures are used less often now than when the case began with a dispute over radio ads in a 1986 Colorado Senate race.

The dissenters rejected the majority’s finding that there is no real difference between this kind of party spending and direct contributions by individuals or political action committees.

“I remain baffled that this court has extended the most generous First Amendment safeguards to filing lawsuits, wearing profane jackets and exhibiting drive-in movies with nudity but has offered only tepid protection to the core speech and associated rights that our founders sought to defend,” Thomas wrote.

The ruling applies to party spending for House and Senate candidates, a category that totaled $427 million for Republicans and $265 million for Democrats in the 2000 elections.

Republicans stood to benefit more directly from an end to party spending limits, because of the historical fund-raising advantage the party enjoys.

GOP officials played down Monday’s ruling, noting that it preserves a status quo in place since the Watergate era.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., one of the leading opponent of the McCain-Feingold overhaul, also discounted the ruling’s effect.

“McCain-Feingold advocates can take no comfort in today’s decision,” because it dealt only with regulated “hard” money, McConnell said.

The McCain-Feingold measure has passed the Senate and is awaiting action in the House next month.

Senate opponents of the soft money ban and some others on both sides of the issue had predicted the court would rule the other way.

Most of those predictions drew on the court’s earlier ruling in another part of the same Colorado dispute. In 1996, the court abolished limits on party independent spending on behalf of candidates, and the Colorado Republicans urged the court to adopt the same rationale here.

The kind of spending at issue in Monday’s case is different, because the money is spent with such a specific intent to help candidates, Souter wrote for the majority.

The cap on political party spending was passed as part of broad campaign money laws in 1974.

The FEC limits national and state parties to spending $33,780 apiece to help elect a House candidate. Senate limits are based on population and range from $67,560 for races in the smallest states to $1.6 million for California.

NEW YORK — A fundamental change has occurred in the housing market over the past few years, and it is likely to play an increasing role in changing people’s lifestyles.

It is already doing so. More Americans own their houses than ever before, thanks to low borrowing rates and variable mortgages to fit needs. Prices are rising. Unemployment is near postwar lows. Incomes are up.

Most significantly, the market value of houses has outpaced inflation for the seventh straight year, rising 16 percent since 1993. As a national group, you might expect homeowners to be growing wealthier.

They aren’t.

Valuations are rising, but so is borrowing. Despite rising prices, equity has fallen sharply in the past decade, continuing a postwar decline only mildly interrupted during the 1970s and 1980s.

Moreover, mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures are rising too, partly a result of the high level of borrowing, partly a consequence of buying with low down payments and resulting high monthly payments.

The erosion of equity is one of the major issues in the latest “The State of the Nation’s Housing,” an annual analysis of the housing market by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The situation reflects not just a change in affordability levels (more difficult) but a vast change in consumer behavior. To take out a second mortgage once indicated necessity. Today it is a lifestyle choice.

In short, the house is a bank from which money can be borrowed at low rates to finance other purchases, including vacations, cars and electronic gadgetry as well as tuition, often with a tax deduction to boot.

This is a momentous change from the past, when the house was viewed as a sanctuary not to be violated by financial risk-taking, and the goal of owners was to achieve security by reducing or paying off the mortgage.

The changing attitude by today’s borrowers involves growing confidence in the ability to hold onto a job and maintain a certain level of income, but also perhaps the desire for the rewards of wealth now,

not later.

The change raises risks, not just to households but to the general economy. With equity falling as a percentage of price, the consequences of job loss and recessions grow proportionately.

Still another consequence, especially in cases of low down payments and heavy borrowing, may be to maintain selling prices at artificially high levels, barring low-income earners from joining the market.

There may be risks to the future as well. Despite the importance of Individual Retirement Accounts, 401(k) plans and defined benefit plans, home equity remains the primary retirement fund for millions of Americans.

In the past, the housing market has been an economic stabilizer in many ways. You can even argue that its recent strength has been the major factor in averting or moderating recession tendencies in other industries.

In terms of macroeconomics, there’s a question today about its ability to play the same role in the future.

SAN JOSE — Intel Corp.’s quest to dominate the high-end server market got a major boost Monday as Compaq Computer Corp. said it plans to abandon its own Alpha processor in favor of Intel’s Itanium processor by 2004. It’s the latest sign that the server industry may be moving away from proprietary chips and toward standardization that marked the development, growth and flexibility of PCs.

Compaq is the second maker of processors and servers – workhorse computers that power everything from corporate networks and Web sites to biotechnology research – to announce plans to eventually exit the chip business.

Hewlett-Packard Co., which co-developed Itanium, also said it will consolidate its products behind the Intel processor.

For Intel, the agreement represents not just another customer, but a major endorsement of Itanium, which was put into production this year after several delays and nearly a decade of development.

“Itanium needed an imprimatur of legitimacy,” said Drew Peck, an analyst at SG Cowen Securities. “Compaq gave it to them. It’s a high-profile win.”

High-end servers account for about half of the $54 billion total server market. Major players include International Business Machines Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., HP and Compaq.

So far, Sun is the only company that does not plan to incorporate the Itanium into any of its designs, instead relying on its proprietary processors.

Shares of both Intel and Compaq closed higher Monday. Intel was up 97 cents to $28.58 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Compaq’s stock price rose 40 cents, to $13.90 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Intel also will acquire Compaq’s Alpha equipment and tools, as well as license its technology. Several hundred Compaq employees will be offered transfers, the companies said.

Intel plans to use those engineers in future Itanium development, said Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager of Intel’s Architecture Group.

“A real sweetener for Intel is access to all the engineers. You can’t shortchange that,” said Dan Scovel, an analyst at Needham & Co. “Getting hold of processor engineers these days is not an easy thing to do.”

Compaq denied that it is backpedaling from the acquisition. The company will focus on developing improvements on components and software outside the processor.

“What you’re seeing is a transition in where vendors believe they can add their value, and it’s not in proprietary microprocessors,” said Mike Winkler, executive vice president of Compaq’s Global Business Units.

Compaq said it will support the Alpha architecture even after it consolidates its entire 64-bit server family on the Itanium architecture.

The announcement comes as both Intel and Compaq are struggling to regain their footing as their PC-related businesses struggle.

Compaq faces a brutal price war with other PC makers, including Dell Computer Corp. Intel also has seen its margins and market share erode amid increasing competition and the economic downturn.

Compaq announced plans in April to cut more than 9,000 full-time and part-time jobs. In an internal memo this month, executives announced plans to reduce overhead costs by another $200 million per quarter.

More than half of Compaq’s revenues now come from non-PC businesses, including its servers and services businesses, Winkler said.

Intel has been diversifying beyond its 32-bit processors that are found in roughly 80 percent of personal computers around the world. Its targets are now on high-end server makers Sun Microsystems Inc. and IBM.

The Itanium processes information in 64 bit chunks. It also can address more memory and transfer data more quickly, allowing for exponential improvements in performance.

Itanium is Intel’s first move into the 64-bit arena. The Alpha, introduced by Digital Equipment Corp. in 1993, was the first.

Intel is hoping big sales of Itanium will help offset the high development costs — something the developers of proprietary processors cannot do so easily, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at the research firm Insight 64.

After one year of working without a contract, after going out on a series of one-to-three-day strikes, after endless hours at the negotiating table, hospital workers and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center management have agreed on a new contact.

Service Employees International Union members voted to approve the contract on Friday. “We are very pleased that the members of SEIU Local 250 have ratified this new contract,” said Alta Bates Summit CEO Irwin Hansen in a press statement. “We will now continue with what the hospitals do best – servicing the health care needs of our community.”

SEIU members called the contract “a big victory.”

“I’m ecstatic, I’m excited,” said Deborah Covington, chief shop steward and a dietary aide at the Oakland campus of the newly-merged Alta Bates Summit Hospital. The three-campus Berkeley-Oakland hospital is part of the Sutter Health Care hospital group.

Over the four-year contract, wages will rise 16 percent, but that wasn’t at the heart of the negotiations.

“We got a voice in staffing,” Covington said. The union had negotiated long and hard in order to set up a labor management committee that would evaluate staffing needs and make recommendations to the hospital, Covington said. When there is disagreement, an independent third party will make the final staffing determination.

The new contract also sets limits on mandatory overtime.

Among those benefiting from the new contract will be licensed vocational nurses, dietary aides and housekeeping staff.

An Alta Bates Summit spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

A power outage early Monday morning left 3,000 South Berkeley and Oakland residents without electricity for two hours and another 500 without power for four hours.

Staci Homrig, of Pacific Gas & Electric, said the outage was caused by a downed powerline and started at 6:30 a.m. Most people had their power restored by 8:30 a.m., but about 500 were left without power until 10:45 a.m.

David Brower Day

celebration Saturday

The first annual David Brower Day will be celebrated Saturday, honoring the Berkeley native credited with making nature conservation a political issue.

Sponsored by Earth Island Institute, the city, the Ecology Center, and KPFA Radio, an outdoor festival will take place from noon to 5 p.m. at Civic Center Park on Martin Luther King Jr. Way between Center Street and Allston Way. The free event will include an Eco-Restoration Decathlon, live music, story telling, an Environmental Action Fair, Sustainable Crafts Market, and organic and vegetarian food.

At 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Lee Stetson will perform The Spirit of John Muir in the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, just south of the park. A special screening of In the Light of Reverence by the Sacred Land Film Project will take place at 3:30 p.m. followed with a panel of speakers.

Co-founder of the League of Conservation Voters and founder of Friends of the Earth and Earth Island Institute, Bower led campaigns that resulted in the creation of nine national parks and seashores. He has been credited with ensuring a Grand Canyon free of dams and many national forest preservations, and was an instrumental part of the Sierra Club in the 1950s and 1960s.

Host families needed for adult foreign exchange students

Language Studies International is looking for host families for its foreign adult students. The English school for foreign students has a homestay option to allow the students to experience life with American families during their program.

Due in part to the housing crisis, the school has been unable to find hosts for all of the 800 - 1,000 students who attend each year, according to a letter from Steven Franklin, Registrar and Accommodations Coordinator for LSI.

Hosts of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to participate, including singles. Hosts are paid $182.50 per week to provide breakfast, dinner and a private room to a foreign student, and can choose a short-term (two - four weeks) or a yearlong stay.

The host can live anywhere in the East Bay as long as the student can easily commute to downtown Berkeley. For more information or to apply to host a student for the peak period from mid-July through September, call LSI at 841-4695.

A 20 -year-old UC Berkeley student walking home on Channing Way was robbed at gunpoint at 1 a.m. Sunday.

Lt. Russell Lopes, police spokesperson, said the woman was walking near Telegraph Avenue when a man approached her with a handgun and demanded money. Although she had no cash, she handed the attacker her wallet, Lopes said. The man took her wallet and ran off. The victim was unharmed.

•••

An Arco gas station was robbed at 3 a.m. Friday by a man who allegedly used only a hand in his pocket to simulate a gun. Lt. Lopes said the suspect walked into the cashier’s booth with his hand in his pocket to make it appear he had a gun and demanded money.

The lone attendant handed the suspect several hundreds of dollars, and the suspect ran off. Lopes said there were no injuries and there have been no arrests made. The suspect is described as a black 27 year old, 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 200 pounds

•••

A verbal dispute turned violent when one of the men involved allegedly pulled a six-inch knife on the other at Golden Gate Fields at 6 a.m. Friday.

Lt. Lopes said two horse groomers were arguing when one pulled a knife and attacked the other. The suspect allegedly attempted to stab the victim, but was only able to hit the victim with the butt of the knife causing a bump on the victim’s head. He was not taken to the hospital, The suspect was placed under arrest.

•••

A man with a knife got away with several hundred dollars from Café Elodie at 2110 Shattuck Ave. at 10:15 a.m. Wednesday. Lt. Lopes said the suspect entered the café while the lone employee was in a closet where only staff is allowed.

The suspect allegedly walked into the closet and started a conversation with the worker asking if he remembered the suspect giving him an application.

When the employee said he didn’t know what the suspect was talking about, the suspect pulled a hunting tool with a fixed four-inch blade and reached into the floor safe, Lopes said. The suspect ran off with a bag full of cash. No injuries were reported, and there have been no arrests.

Camps

City of Berkeley Summer Fun Camps

June 18-August 17

Summer Fun Camps for children feature sports, games, arts and crafts and special events. Events and trips will be planned in and out of the Berkeley area. Supervised play and activities held Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for kids 5-12 year of age. Before and after care will be available at additional cost. Fees on a sliding scale.

Camp for ages 11-17. Three week camp will provide skills for overnight and wilderness camping. First two weeks include instruction on cooking, first aid, cleanup and low impact camping. Rafting, ropes course and daily hikes. Week three is five days in a California wilderness area using newly-learned skills. $180, limited scholarships available. Call 845-7193 for more information.

Berkeley Tennis Club Kids

Camp

Sessions begin June 25, July 9, July 23, August 6

These camps are designed for the beginner to low advanced player aged 7-14. Each session is two weeks long. The first week emphasizes proper stroke and footwork techniques, conditioning and game play. The second week concentrates on competition on both an individual and team level. Students will be divided according to ability, so they progress at their own pace. Student-intructor ratio of 6/1. Clinics are 9 a.m. to noon. $250 for B.T.C. members, $300 for non-members. Call 841-9023 for information.

Leagues

Youth Baseball

Summer baseball program for boys and girls ages 5-15. The focus is on developing skills, sportsmanship and enjoyment rather than competitiveness. Leagues are structured to address both skill level and age group. Players are assigned to teams on a city-wide basis. Beginner teams (5-6 years) meet weekdays from noon to 2 p.m. All other teams meet from 3:30 to 7 p.m. weekdays or 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. All players must participate. Playoffs and awards will follow the regular season in older leagues. Fees: $34 ages 5-8 ($70 non-resident), $40 ages 9-15($86 non-resident). For more information call 981-5153.

Adult softball

Summer league starts July 2.

Leagues available for men, women and co-rec. Three levels of competition. Games played weekday evenings, Saturday afternoons and evenings. 10 games plus playoffs. $561 per team. Call 981-5150 for more information.

The City of Berkeley Twilight Basketball Program is an educational sports program which offers youths aged 11-18 the opportunity to play in the competitive league and be exposed to educational workshops. Subjects include tobacco prevention, HIV/STD prevention, domestic violence prevention, academic improvement and youth violence prevention. All participants must attend a one-hour workshop before each game in order to play. Free, players recieve a jersey. Ten game season with playoffs at MLK Youth Services Center. For more information call Ginsi Bryant at 644-6226.

Adult basketball

Summer league

Open, competitive league with games on Monday and Wednesday evenings at the MLK Youth Services Center. All games officicated by certified referees. Awards for top three teams. Teams already formed for summer, but some have openings. Interested players should show up and talk to coaches about playing.

Programs

City-Wide Playground

Programs

June 25-August 17

Free supervised activities include arts and crafts, games, sports, special event days and local trips. Program hours are noon to 5 p.m. Proof of Berkeley residency required at registration.

Overnight sails tour the San Francisco Bay. Visit the Bay Model, Angel Island, Treasure Island and Sausalito. Voyage dates: July 13-14 and 28-29, August 9-10, 16-17 and 23-24. $20 per voyage. Call 845-7193 for more information.

Adult Tennis Workshops

Sessions begin July 9 and July 23

These four-day sessions are designed to five adults a chance to improve their game in just one concentrated week. Two levels offered – NTPR rating between 4.0-4.5 and 3.5-below. Both sessions will have a doubles strategy emphasis. $110 per session. Call 841-9023 for more details.

Judah L. Magnes Museum “Telling Time: To Everything There Is A Season” through May 2002. An exhibit structured around the seasons of the year and the seasons of life with objects ranging from the sacred and the secular, to the provocative and the whimsical. 2911 Russell St. 549-6950

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall.

924 Gilman St. All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted $5; $2 for year membership. All ages. June 29: Barfeeders, Pac-Men, Hell After Dark, A.K.A. Nothing, Maurice’s Little Bastards; June 30: The Cost, Pg. 99, Majority Rule, 7 Days of Samsara, Since by Man, Creation is Crucifixion; July 6: Victim’s Family, Fleshies, The Modern Machines, Once For Kicks, The Blottos; July 7: The Stitches, Real MacKenzies, The Briefs, The Eddie Haskells, The Spits 525-9926

125 Records Release Party June 30: 9:45 p.m. Anton Barbeau and Belle De Gama will celebrate the release of their albums The Golden Boot: Antology 2 and Garden Abstract respectively. These are the first two albums released on the 125 Records label, founded by Joe Mallon with his winnings from his appearance on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” $5. Starry Plough 3101 Shattuck Avenue 841-2082

Leopold’s Fancy July 2: 8 p.m., Traditional Irish music, part of “Extreme Joyce/Reading On the Edge,” a conference celebrating the works of James Joyce. Free. 2271 Shattuck Ave. 642-2754

Dramatic Joyce July 3: 7:30 p.m. Dramatic interpretations of the works of James Joyce by local and international actors. Introduction by UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop with commentary by and conversation with the audience. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” Free. Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus 2601 Warring Street 642-2754

“Do You Hear What I Am Seeing?” July 5: 7:30 p.m. One man show by David Norris, a two-hour sampling of Joyce’s works with Norris’ insights. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” $10. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org

“Iphegenia in Aulis” June 25 - August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541

Diane Tokugawa and Alan Gould, who live in the same house next to Congregation Beth El’s new building site, wrote separate letters to the Daily Planet on June 15 that filled almost the entire “Forum” section.

They both re-raised issues that were thoroughly dealt with in the City’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and during many hours of hearings before the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) and other official bodies.

The EIR, probably the most extensive ever done for a project this size in Berkeley, concluded that the synagogue could be built without significant impacts. The ZAB approved a permit for Beth El after studying the issue for months.

Yet Gould and Tokugawa write as if these official findings had never been made – as if the process that has gone on for several years was just beginning.

They also chose to ignore the facts that Beth El is doing far more than anyone else has done to repair the badly neglected banks of Codornices Creek – and that changes made in Beth El’s plan at the Zoning Board will make it possible to open the underground part of the creek if funding is raised for this purpose.

Of course any Berkeley citizen has the right to question decisions of city officials and outside experts, but it seems that no decision would satisfy Mr. Gould and Ms. Tokugawa, except not building a synagogue at all.

That is an outcome that hundreds of other Berkeley citizens who have watched Beth El follow every rule and regulation in the city’s demanding permit process would find seriously unjust.

Scott Spear

Berkeley

Please support reasonable Beth El expansion

Editor:

I’ve lived in Berkeley for 11 years, and in the East Bay for 20 years. I live in a neighborhood just north of the campus, in fact on a street that fills with parked cars on football days. Though the added traffic is a bit of a headache I do not resent the intrusion of cars and people on these days – in fact I enjoy the excitement, and I see this as a small price to pay to live in a city that benefits from the proximity to the university. I also live within four blocks of our current synagogue, the new building site, and four neighborhood churches. Again my experience as a resident is one of tolerating certain inconveniences – there are certainly days when churchgoers add to the traffic in my neighborhood – but this is Berkeley life. I’ve chosen to live here rather than in the quieter but as I would see it duller bedroom communities of the East Bay. I believe that the density of our community, with a university, churches and synagogues and commercial centers and residential streets all in rather close confines contributes to the excitement of living here in this wonderfully diverse community.

I work in downtown Berkeley – as a psychiatrist providing care at times to some of the less fortunate members of our community. As I walk around downtown, there are days when I too rail against change – as it is disturbing to me to see big buildings going up, parking getting tighter, and the downtown area getting more crowded. But I recognize that though it is natural to fear change, constructive change also helps our city to thrive and makes it vibrant and alive. After all, what are some of those large buildings going up – an expanded library, a public safety building, a new theatre complex built in a developing arts center. These are changes for the good; changes to embrace.

I worship in Berkeley, where my family has participated in the Beth El community over the past 13 years. My children have attended the Beth El sponsored day camp for 10 years, as have many hundreds of non-Jewish children. I worship in a synagogue that has no room to grow, that has no room to seat those of us who wish to sit in on religious discussions on Saturday mornings. The synagogue was designed and built for a congregation one-third to half its current size. There has been no new synagogue built in Berkeley in 50 years. It seems only reasonable to me that my tolerance and appreciation of the varied institutions that contribute to the strenghth of this city should be matched by others’ appreciation of the need my community has to be allowed to expand and grow – and to expand in a way that will beautify the neighborhood (Just examine carefully the decrepit condition of the current buildings and terrain at the Oxford site) and a plan Berkeley’s environmental consultants could find no major fault with.

I live, work and worship here in our city – nd I ask others for their support of the new Beth El Synagogue.

John Rosenberg

Berkeley

Reddy ruling and coverage puzzles reader

Editor:

Shame on the Berkeley Daily Planet for NOT ONCE mentioning in your reports today on the Reddy case that he caused the death of a young Indian woman!

As a recent immigrant to the US, I do not understand some things about the American legal system, so I am left with several questions after having followed the Reddy case which ended in his sentencing yesterday (June 19).

I attended his trial at Oakland's Federal Court which astounded me because of the weak-kneed stance of the prosecution, the cleverly devious methods of the defense, and the fact that the judge struck me as being overly considerate to a man who has perpetrated awful crimes against several women of his race.

I understand what is involved in plea bargaining; nevertheless it seems to me an unfair practice since one who admits his guilt is given a better chance at a lesser sentence. Why should this be? A crime is a crime and deserves punishment.

The court established that Reddy had, over many years, been illegally bringing to the US many women and men from his impoverished Indian village to make them work in his restaurant and apartments (most of these were young women whom he and his son raped at will). Since one woman died due to his negligence over a faulty heater, why was he not tried for her death? Why was DNA testing not done on the fetus found in the woman to determine paternity?

Do Americans believe, as many Indians do, that female lives are not important?

The U.S. democratic system is indeed one of the world's wonders because if Reddy lived in India and committed his crimes there, he might never even have been tried. But yesterday I found that justice was NOT done in America because it was almost farcical to see such such a light sentence (a mere 8 years) imposed on an immigrant who, because he has amassed great wealth and could pay for high-powered lawyers, will pay a mere pittance to only seven of his victims.

Isabel T. Escoda

Berkeley

(Editor’s note: The death of the young woman was ruled accidental and was not part of the plea bargain.)

Monday, June 25

Tectonic Theater Project

7 p.m.

Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater

2015 Addison Street

“Page to Stage: Surviving the Media” is a conversation with the Tectonic Theater Project and professor Douglas Foster. The Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepard and wrote a play about the impact Shepard’s death, and the following media scrutiny, had upon the small community. The Laramie Project is running through July 8 at the Berkeley Rep.

Tuesday, June 26

Saranel Benjamin, trade unionist from South Africa, will discuss the impact of corporate globalization on South African workers. Sponsored by Berkeley’s Women of Color Resource Center.

848-9272

Berkeley Camera Club

7:30 p.m.

Northbrae Community Church

941 The Alameda

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips.

Call Don, 525-3567

Wednesday, June 27

Conversations in Commedia

7:30 p.m.

La Pena

3105 Shattuck Ave.

The series pairs radical theater “elders” to share memories of their years in Commedia. This week with former Mime Troupe actress Audrey Smith and Ladies Against Women character Selma Spector. $6 - $8.

849-2568

Disaster Council

7 p.m.

Emergency Operations Center

997 Cedar Street

Update on Measure G.

644-8736

Socratic Circle Discussion

5 p.m.

Cafe Electica

1309 Solano Avenue

Gather for espresso and discussion at the “green” teen cafe. Open to all. Free.

527-2344

Thursday, June 28

Quit Smoking Class

6 - 8 p.m.

South Berkeley Senior Center

2939 Ellis Street

A six week quit smoking class. Free to Berkeley residents and employees.

Meet with East Bay job seekers while listening to music by DJ and Emcee Marty Nemko. Also, cash bar, free hors d’oeurves, and prize giveaways. Free and open to the public. Call 251-1401.

www.eastbaytechjobs.com/mixer/

Take the Terror Out of

Talking!

Noon to 1:30 p.m.

California Dept. of Health Services

2151 Berkeley Way

Room 804

Open house at State Health Toastmasters Club to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Free.

649-7750

Friday, June 29

Living Philosophers

10 a.m. - Noon

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Hear and entertain the ideas of some modern day philosophers: Jacob Needleman, J. Revel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty and others. Every Friday except holidays. Facilitated by H.D. Moe.

Therapy for Trans Partners

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Center for Human Growth

2712 Telegraph Ave.

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522

Strong Women: Arts, Herstory

and Literature

1:15 - 3:15 p.m.

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program.

Call 549-2970

Carefree/Carfree Tour

3 p.m.

Sather Gate

UC Berkeley

Telegraph at Bancroft

Walking tour from Sather Gate to People’s Park entitled “Berkeley in the Sixties.” Led by Free Speech veterans and Berkeley residents Kate Coleman and Michael Rossman, the tour will include important locations and discussions of the Free Speech movement, the Vietnam Day Committee, the rise of affirmative action, and other events and movements. Free.

A shining star, a link to the chain of history, a fighter. Those are some of the words Berkeley officials, activists, and residents used to describe Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek, as they celebrated her 90th birthday at the North Berkeley Senior Center Saturday.

Re-elected seven times to the City Council, Shirek is reportedly the oldest elected official in California. But she is mostly known for her extraordinary commitment to social causes both locally and internationally.

“She changed the life of so many people,” said U.S Representative Barbara Lee, D-Alameda, a special guest to the event and an old friend of Shirek’s. “Every time I get ready to cast a very tough vote I think ‘What would Maudelle do?’”

From a field of 68 boys and 37 girls, it all came down to two final matches on Saturday at the United States Tennis Association NorCal Sectional 18-and-under Tournament. The matches were played at the Berkeley Tennis Club.

In the girls’ final, eighth-seeded Jenna Long of Fremont came back from losing the first set to upset top-seeded Alexandra Podkolzina of Concord, 5-7, 6-3, 6-3.

In the boys’ final, No. 5 Pramod Dabir used a powerful serve and punishing groundstrokes to down fourth-seeded Darrin Cohen, 6-2, 6-4. Dabir, a Saratoga native, was only broken once in the match.

School board members and proponents of sweeping reforms for Berkeley High School found a lot to agree on last week, but they seemed to part company with considerable confusion and disagreement about the next step in the process.

“If you’re willing to do something fundamental, something serious, instead of just tinkering with the current model and allowing the drift to continue, small schools is definitely the way to go,” Rick Ayers, the Berkeley High teacher charged with coordinating the reform planning process, told the school board at their regular meeting last Wednesday.

Since the school district received a federal $50,000 grant last year to study how the “small learning community” model could be applied at Berkeley High School, Ayers has worked with an advisory committee of school staff and parents to compile research on the topic, and to lead weekly discussion groups.

The group has also convened a number of larger community meetings to disseminate information on small schools and solicit input and how the model might work in Berkeley.

Over the course of the last 15 years, a number of large urban high schools around the country have implemented some kind of small learning community model to combat problems with truancy, violence, low student achievement and high teacher turnover. Public schools can better meet the wildly varying needs of their students, the argument goes, by dividing “factory model” high schools into small learning communities of 500 students or less — each with dedicated teaching staff and a degree of governing autonomy.

It simply creates “a scale where parents and staff become more engaged” and are able to give students the personal attention they need, Ayers argued Wednesday.

Berkeley High itself has been implementing small learning communities over the last five years or so, but in a piecemeal way. Core groups of like minded teachers have bonded together to launch their “schools-within-a-school,” fighting the district bureaucracy every step of the way for the resources they need to do so.

Dana Richards, director of Berkeley High’s “Common Grounds” program, a small learning community with an anticipated enrollment of 400 students next year, told the school board Wednesday

The City Council will likely renew a long-standing contract with Berkeley Youth Alternative to continue the employment program which assists at-risk teenagers learn about work habits and gardening skills in the city’s parks.

The recommendation will be considered by the council at Tuesday’s meeting. The $85,000 contract will allow for the continued employment of Berkeley teenagers to help maintain city parks while learning task-oriented responsibilities such as creek restoration and plant cultivation. The Youth Employment Training and Park Maintenance Project is one of three youth-oriented programs the Parks and Waterfront Department oversees.

“This is mutually beneficial program that helps the kids learn about good work habits and helps maintain Berkeley’s parks in a way they couldn’t with just city staff alone.” said Parks and Waterfront Director Lisa Caronna.

According to the recommendation, the program usually works with teenagers between 14 and 16 years old. They work an average of 10 hours a week for 26 weeks. Those that show progress will be asked to work beyond the initial 26 weeks and are offered assistance securing other jobs both within and outside the BYA program.

In the last two years, over 62 percent of the teenagers who were involved in the program were placed in other jobs, according to the report. In 1999, 14 of the 20 teenagers who participated in the program went on to other jobs.

The teenagers work at several city parks including Strawberry Creek Park, Grove Park and Thousand Oaks School Park and Blackberry Creek.

They are supervised by a BYA employee and are supervised by city landscape gardeners, who determine proper tools and monitor the work performed.

BYA operates more than 15 separate programs serving at-risk youth and their families in west Berkeley including an After School Center, a Crisis Counseling and a Sports and Fitness Center. In the last two years, BYA has worked with over 800 people ranging in age from three to 18 years of age, according to the recommendation’s report.

SAN DIEGO – As an array of officials prepared to represent California in federally ordered talks with power companies, Gov. Gray Davis on Sunday discounted suggestions that the state will accept far less in electricity rebates than he believes it’s owed.

“We’re going back to Washington with one goal, and that’s to get back $9 billion,” Davis said from San Diego in a telephone conference with reporters.

California officials contend that power generators have overcharged the state and investor-owned utilities utilities $8.9 billion since last May. The companies argue that the charges, which have reached as high as $3,380 a megawatt hour, were justified.

“Power providers have been taking advantage of our market; they gamed the system and ripped people off,” Davis said.

On Monday, officials from the state, the utilities and the generators meet under orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to negotiate a settlement over the alleged overcharges.

The talks will be overseen by Curtis Wagner Jr., FERC’s chief administrative law judge. Wagner said Friday that he was optimistic a settlement would be reached, but thought the amount would be closer to $2 billion or $2.5 billion.

Davis said Michael Kahn, chairman of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s power grid, will lead California’s negotiating team. Also taking part in the talks will be representatives of the Attorney General’s Office, the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Water Resources.

FERC has authority only over private power generators, but the state claims it also was overcharged by public entities — such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the trading arm of Canada’s BC Hydro.

Davis senior adviser Nancy McFadden said a settlement with the private generators would give the state leverage with the others. “We need to use the forum that we’ve got available to us,” she said.

Davis said the state will get a little more breathing room in the power grid over the next two and a half weeks, when three new power plants producing a total of nearly 1,400 megawatts are scheduled to go on line.

A 320-megawatt plant near Bakersfield is set to begin operating Wednesday, and will be followed by a 500-megawatt plant near Yuba City and a 559-megawatt plant in Contra Costa County.

The addition this summer of major power plants, smaller peaker plants and cleaner-burning “qualifying facilities” should add 4,000 megawatts to the state’s overburdened power grid by Sept. 30, Davis said. That expansion and ongoing conservation efforts will reduce the chances of rolling blackouts, he said.

Davis also said that he will meet Monday with three former employees of one power generator, Duke Energy, who testified before a California Senate committee Friday.

The former employees, who were laid off in April, say they were told to shut units down for unnecessary repairs in a scheme to drive up electricity prices. The company called the claims “baseless.”

Developments in California’s energy crisis:

SUNDAY:

— Gov. Gray Davis discounted suggestions that California will end up agreeing to rebates that are a fraction of what the state contends it is owed by power generators. California officials contend that power generators have overcharged the state and investor-owned utilities utilities $8.9 billion since last May. A top official with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Friday that he thought a settlement could mean $2 billion or $2.5 billion for the state.

— Davis said three new power plants totalling almost 1,400 megawatts of electricity should be on line in the next two and a half weeks. The first is a 320-megawatt facility near Bakersfield set to go on line Wednesday.

— No power alerts Sunday as electricity reserves stay above 7 percent. Track the state’s blackout warnings on the Web at www.caiso.com/SystemStatus.html.

— Davis plans to meet Monday with three former Duke Energy employees who say the power generator ordered unnecessary repairs to one plant in a scheme to raise prices.

— Greenpeace Executive Director John Passacantando says he will deliver Davis a plane ticket Monday to attend global warming talks in Bonn, Germany, next month, as part of the environmental group’s demand for cleaner energy alternatives to help solve the state’s energy crisis. The effort is part of a new drive with other conservation groups dubbed Clean Energy Now. See www.cleanenergynow.org.

— The state Senate continues to hold hearings on the Edison rescue deal.

High demand, high wholesale energy costs, transmission glitches and a tight supply worsened by scarce hydroelectric power in the Northwest and maintenance at aging California power plants are all factors in California’s electricity crisis.

Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric say they’ve lost nearly $14 billion since June to high wholesale prices the state’s electricity deregulation law bars them from passing on to consumers. PG&E, saying it hasn’t received the help it needs from regulators or state lawmakers, filed for federal bankruptcy protection April 6. Electricity and natural gas suppliers, scared off by the companies’ poor credit ratings, are refusing to sell to them, leading the state in January to start buying power for the utilities’ nearly 9 million residential and business customers. The state is also buying power for a third investor-owned utility, San Diego Gas & Electric, which is in better financial shape than much larger Edison and PG&E but also struggling with high wholesale power costs.

The Public Utilities Commission has approved average rate increases of 37 percent for the heaviest residential customers and 38 percent for commercial customers, and hikes of up to 49 percent for industrial customers and 15 percent or 20 percent for agricultural customers to help finance the state’s multibillion-dollar power buys.

SAN JOSE – For a century, a labyrinthine network of switches and wires has connected voices around the world. Access is as easy as picking up a telephone and pressing a few buttons.

More recently, separate networks have sprouted, not to carry conversations, but the electronic chatter of machines. These data networks now interconnect and span the globe.

Though both networks can handle both voice and data, their complete convergence has long seemed a pipe dream. Phones are simple but limited in function and bandwidth. Data networks are flexible but complicated.

Now, high-speed data networks have become so pervasive as to transform telephony. The global phone system is on the verge of its biggest technology shift since Alexander Graham Bell’s invention eclipsed the telegraph.

Using data networks, telephone calls will no longer be made by completing circuits, a connection made by automated switches today and human operators long ago. Instead, voices will be broken down into packets of data and transmitted over the Internet just like e-mail, instant messages and other data.

The technology not only makes phone calls cheaper, it also enables new services.

“It’s not just about carrying voice,” said Rick Weston, senior vice president of Qwest Internet Solutions. “It’s about the features that we’re going to build on top of these networks.”

Voice mail and e-mail, for instance, could be checked from a single program, either on a phone or a computer. New lines could be added without running extra copper wire.

Employees’ telephones, assigned unique addresses, could be moved to another office or home with a few clicks of a mouse. Dial tone could be replaced with useful information, such as news or scheduled appointments.

These technologies are happening now, and dozens of companies are scrambling to profit from the convergence of data and voice networks.

Large corporations are already saving money by routing calls to satellite offices through their computer networks, bypassing the taxes and tolls of the traditional phone system and negating the need for a separate voice network.

Companies report costs savings of up to 30 percent with such systems, according to the consulting firm InfoTech.

Equipment makers such as Cisco Systems Inc. and 3Com Corp. sell specialized equipment that efficiently routes voice data over businesses’ local networks and connects it to the existing telephone system. The market is expected to grow to more than $3.3 billion in 2001 and $11.6 billion in 2004, the Telecommunications Industry Association says.

Providers of high-speed Internet access are now testing the technology, hoping to cash in.

Even established phone companies such as Qwest and SBC Communications see it as a way to add services without having to lay new cable.

Yet none of the services have much value if the person on the other line can’t be heard. That, so far, has been the big challenge.

Early Internet telephony, generally used to bypass long-distance and international charges, was awkward. A caller used a microphone and speakers attached to a computer.

Now, actual phones are available, and they connect to data lines instead of phone wires.

But the hardest part has been hearing the other person. Voice packets can get delayed or lost as they transit data networks.

Unlike the phone system, which creates dedicated circuits for each call, data packets from an Internet call can take varied routes. Even with a fast connection, a conversation with a next-door neighbor can sound like a call from Chechnya.

“You may get a perfectly good call if things are working fine,” said Alec Henderson of Cisco Systems Inc.’s voice technology center. “But if everyone is trying to download the Victoria’s Secret show, your call may not go through at all.”

The key is giving voice packets priority over those containing e-mail and Web data. Companies can do this now only with close monitoring or avoiding altogether the public Internet.

Despite these hurdles, the home market is growing as high-speed Internet access reach more residences.

Companies that once offered choppy PC-to-PC service are introducing devices that link regular telephones to cable or digital modems.

Net2Phone Inc. and Dialpad Communications Inc. run traffic over voice-optimized data networks that connect to the old phone system, allowing calls to be made to regular phone numbers, not just other PCs, for just a few cents a minute.

Still, the quality is not quite on par with the phone network. Data still must pass over local lines and sometimes the public Internet to reach the private networks. Some calls are garbled and, occasionally, disconnected.

Also, the services are mostly being marketed as low-cost second phone lines for teen-agers, and are not yet connected to the 911 emergency system or 411 directory assistance.

DSL and cable providers, meanwhile, are trying to set up phone service on their own data lines.

In one solution, voice packets travel only as far as the nearest switch onto the public telephone network. There, the data is turned back into voice and it joins regular telephone system traffic.

In a nod to consumer friendliness, Jetstream Communications Inc. and Panasonic this month introduced a $500 system that includes all the necessary hardware in a single telephone.

So far, only a handful of high-speed Internet service providers are testing the device, which requires special gateways to connect with the telephone network.

Ultimately, new telephone services will have to offer more than just a reliable and cheap line, said David Neil, an analyst at Gartner.

“Right now, there isn’t a tremendous amount of benefit to be gained from going with the new telephony,” he said. “We think two or three years down the road, you’re going to start to see power coming from voice and data convergence.”

SACRAMENTO – Despite some of the best minds in the nation and its creativity in movies and technology, California is nearly as renowned for what’s wrong: gridlocked freeways, marathon commutes, smog and stratospheric housing prices.

While its films have happy endings and its computers get faster, the congested downside to the nation’s most populous state is only expected to get worse, say growth watchers inside the state and beyond.

State governments elsewhere are experimenting with aggressive topdown solutions to their growth problems. But California, which turned cruising into pop culture and boasts more cars than registered drivers, lags in its customary role as trendsetter, say urban planning analysts.

“If you work in this field, you can’t help but notice there’s not a lot of governmental action,” says Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of the National Governors Association report “Growing Pains.”

Tell it to the millions who endure grueling commutes on the state’s mid-20th Century freeway system.

“It’s a frustrating miserable crawl,” says Albert Yanez, who spends four hours a day driving between Tracy and Palo Alto. Yanez, a plant operations manager with Southwall Technologies, trades a 65-mile drive he calls “horrid” for a house he can afford.

Typical, too, is Greg Nelson, who drives three hours a day between Mission Viejo and downtown Los Angeles.

“I condition myself to make it my Zen time,” says the chief deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs. I really will not let that commute bother me.”

San Diego social worker Carmen Diaz tells horror stories from friends about rent.

“My friend is having a hard time finding something affordable,” she says. “There is nothing less than $800 a month.”

Navy Corpsman Yvette Pryor recalls a futile house hunt last year in San Diego. She says, “I couldn’t find anything under $220,000 for a two-bedroom, one-bath house. There was no way I could afford $220,000.”

For varying reasons, from the state’s size to its legacy of property rights and distrust for strong government, California lets local governments and increasingly, even voters set much of its growth agenda. Last November half the ballot issues in the United States dealing with local growth were in California. While many of these successfully slowed development, some analysts believe they worsen California’s problems.

“That’s giving us policies that are restrictive on a local basis and make no sense regionally,” says Carol Whiteside, who has tracked growth as mayor of Modesto, an official in the Gov. Pete Wilson Administration and now as director of the Great Valley Center.

As Californians wrestle with growth one shopping center at a time, Hirschhorn says innovators in growth management are smaller states such as Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. He also cites Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Utah.

Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening, facing a million newcomers within two decades in a state of 5.2 million people, once feared they’d consume as much open land as developed in the state’s history. Glendening uses state highway, water and sewer funds to drive development into existing cities.

On July 1, his state planning chief, Harriet Tregoning, will become the nation’s first Cabinet-level Secretary of Smart Growth.

“We’re incredibly committed to trying to change development patterns in Maryland,” says Tregoning. The governor’s aim is to change the idea of the “good life,” she says, so “the good life becomes something other than a large single-family detached home surrounded by acres of lawn.”

But Maryland has fewer people than the San Francisco Bay Area. California, in the 1990s, grew by 4 million residents after adding 6 million during the 1980s. In April, the Texas Transportation Institute ranked Los Angeles and San Francisco-Oakland first and second for the country’s worst traffic. The state has much of the nation’s most polluted air and highest housing costs. A May poll of 2001 adults by the Public Policy Institute of California revealed growth as the biggest concern after the electricity crisis.

Yet by a 3-1 margin the same Californians said state government should stay out of land-use decisions.

Whiteside acknowledges that the state is “AWOL on leadership on growth issues. But she adds, “In fairness to this governor and the last one, who’s clamoring for it?”

Fulton says no California governor since Jerry Brown, from 1975 to 1983, aggressively contended with growth. The state, he says is “big and it’s complicated and that’s part of the problem. To the extent you see interesting solutions, you will see it come from individual regions.”

In Sacramento, Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg is borrowing from Minneapolis-St. Paul, where cities share sales taxes rather than fight over lucrative car dealerships and superstores. This year the Democrat introduced a bill to bring the same to metropolitan Sacramento, nearing 2 million people.

Steinberg, an ex-Sacramento City Council member, says sales tax competition creates “sprawl and uncoordinated growth, and we already have among the worst air quality and traffic in the country in this region.”

Last year 37 Assembly and Senate members formed a Smart Growth Caucus and introduced 25 bills. Caucus organizer and chairwoman Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, argues that state government “should lay out an expectation and a blueprint for the way the state is going to grow and develop and not have it be willy nilly.”

Hirschhorn says states increasingly see growth as a quality of life issue that can make or break their economies.

“They’ve already started to lose some high-tech growth in San Jose,” he says. “Companies have already started going elsewhere. People who work for those companies don’t want to commute four hours a day.”

On the road between Tracy and Palo Alto, commuter Yanez yearns for the bullet trains he’s seen in Japan. Nelson wonders when “enough is enough.” I’m in Orange County,” he says, “looking at possibilities of becoming another L.A.. That’s not an exciting thought.”

SAN DIEGO – There was a time, not so long ago, when biotech was such a clubby and chummy field that organizers of the industry’s annual conference welcomed protesters inside as amusing distractions.

Carl Feldbaum, the nine-year president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, fondly remembers inviting demonstrators dressed as fruits and vegetables onto the conference floor in Seattle in 1999.

“They were very nice young people,” Feldbaum said.

Biotechnology has since grown from a highbrow boutique for brainy molecular scientists to an industry that generated revenues of $22.3 billion last year.

“Nice” is not a word anyone would use anymore to describe biotechnology’s relationship with its critics, who are converging by the thousands on San Diego for this year’s conference, running Sunday through Wednesday.

The Washington, D.C.-based BIO trade group estimates that 1,280 biotech companies nationwide generated revenues of $22.3 billion last year. That’s much less than the $290 billion market capitalization of leading drug-maker Pfizer Inc. and the $500 billion market capitalization of the entire pharmaceutical industry, but rising fast nonetheless.

Publicly owned biotech companies had a combined market capitalization of $35 billion, while $3.2 billion in venture capital investment flowed into biotech start-ups — both all-time highs, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The financial strength of the nation’s 1,280 biotech companies still pales in comparison to the $500 billion market capitalization of the entire pharmaceutical industry, but it’s bulking up fast nonetheless.

Thanks to the decoding of the human genome and the expectation that it will lead to revolutionary medical advances, biotech now has more money, people, and interest than ever before. A record 15,000 attendees are expected at the conference, touting progress toward cures for diseases, agricultural improvements and even help for deep-space exploration.

Though the venture capital stream into startups has slowed this year, biotech — and genomics in particular — remains an active investment area.

In the months since we were told by scientists that we possess an estimated 30,000 genes in each cells, dozens of companies have aggressively searched this genetic code for keys to therapies that can be patented and profited from.

As the industry grows, so does the number and rancor of its critics — as many of 5,000 of which are expected to converge on the San Diego Conference Center.

Even before the conference began, two protesters were arrested around noon Saturday for vandalizing a police car. Both were taken to jail.

Most have focused their ire on genetically engineered “Frankenfoods,” increasing corporate control of the world’s food supply and xenotransplantation — the use of animal organs and tissue for treating human diseases.

“Genetic engineering poses the biggest risks in history to our health and environment,” Greenpeace activist Ama Marston said Thursday outside an Albertson’s grocery store in San Diego, where members of her group ran through the baked goods aisle slapping warning stickers on the food.

Abortion foes also will be out in force, protesting embryonic stem cell research.

They fear scientists will create, clone and destroy embryos simply in the name of research. Proponents, though, argue that no other human cells offer as much promise for regenerating diseased tissue and attacking a host of diseases from Parkinson’s to cancers.

The Bush administration on Wednesday said it would support a bill to ban the cloning of embryonic stem cells. Also pending is an administration decision on whether to block federal funds for the research.

“Even at one cell, I can’t say that’s not a human being,” said Indiana State University cellular biologist David Prentice, an outspoken foe of embryonic stem research.

But where protesters see biological nightmares, Feldbaum and other biotech industry leaders envision millions of lives saved and billions of dollars made.

“Welcome to my chaos,” said Katrina Scott-George, as she watched a reporter walk into her Berkeley High math classroom a few weeks ago.

It was a perfunctory greeting.

Not that Scott-George wasn’t willing – eager, really – to explain how she and five other first time teachers have done more in six months to chip away at the “achievement gap” than the school district has managed in years (at least by their estimation).

It’s just that she’s seen it all as far as the media goes: the San Francisco Chronicle, the online magazine Salon, the Berkeley High Jacket.

She’s watched her students squirm in their seats as photographer flash bulbs lit up the room like an electric storm.

And it hasn’t made a bit of difference. The Rebound program, of which Scott-George is a part, is slated for termination at the end of this summer, unless the school board comes up with more money at the final hour.

Even more hurtful for Scott-George is the feeling that, despite the media frenzy, her work at Berkeley High has somehow escaped the notice of Berkeley school administrators.

Two weeks after this reporter’s visit, Scott-George would stand in front of the Berkeley School board and say, with an air of total resignation: “I’m feeling that there isn’t much point speaking to this body. I feel that this body doesn’t listen.”

And the thing is, it’s just so obvious to Scott-George, and other supporters of the Rebound program, what needs to be done.

A civil engineer by training, Scott-George moved to Berkeley from Connecticut recently and enrolled her child in Berkeley High School. She’d heard about the achievement gap separating students of color from their peers at the school, but she was “shocked,” she said, to see how little was being done to address the gap.

Last fall Scott-George joined a group called Parents of Children of African Descent (PCAD) to demand that the school district institute special classes – with fewer students and more instructional time – to keep freshman students of color who were failing their classes from falling further behind at the school.

In the smaller classes, teachers could meet these students where they were, build relationships of trust, and get the students to truly engage in their academic work at the high school for the first time, PCAD members argued.

The school district approved the Rebound program in January to run though the second semester and into the summer. When it proved impossible for the district to find experienced teachers to staff the program on such short notice, Scott-George volunteered.

After six months as a Rebound math teacher – she received her emergency teaching credential midway through the semester – Scott-George has seen her worst suspicions about what happens to students of color who arrive at Berkeley High unprepared confirmed.

To begin with, Scott-George has seen just how unprepared many of these students are when the step onto the Berkeley High campus. Rebound administered a math preparation test to its 50 students back in January, testing the most basic concepts they should have picked up from the sixth grade on, Scott-George said. Only eight out of 50 got more than 50 percent of answers correct.

Other Rebound teachers tell stories of students who couldn’t write a complete sentence in English being asked to read, discuss and write about English literature in freshman English classes.

“My experience has been that the greatest reason that they have not engaged in math (before Rebound) is that the preparation has not occurred,” Scott-George said.

“If they can’t engage in it, there is nothing else for them to do but horseplay,” she said.

Scott-George and other Rebound supporters understand that the reasons these students have fallen so far behind are numerous and complex. What they don’t understand, they have said again and again, is how the school district can stand by and watch as these kids are assigned to classes at Berkeley High where they have little hope of success.

As long as this continues to happen, they argue, a large part of the African American and Latino communities will remain alienated and marginalized at Berkeley High, feeling that the school consistently fails to serve their interests.

“Parents feel like they’re giving they’re children to the school and getting back garbage,” said an exasperated Scott-George. “And the school, I guess, feels that they’re getting garbage and what can they do?”

After this summer, the 50 Rebound students will resume their place in regular Berkeley High classes as sophomores. PCAD members are already worried about their transition. Debrah Watson, a member of the PCAD Steering Committee, said the group is in the process of hiring a counselor to work closely with the 50 PCAD students for at least for the first couple months of school – until funds run out.

With only 50 students to look after, instead of the 500 students assigned to each of the school’s existing guidance counselors, PCAD members hope this temporary employee will be able to make the move from the close-knit Rebound community back into the huge, comprehensive school a little less abrupt.

For her part, Scott-George tried to prepare her students for the tough transition ahead by giving them an challenging, double-period test a few weeks ago.

Some of the students registered their discontent with a return to the horseplay and willful disobedience they have indulged in so often before Rebound.

“This is how they act when they’re angry,” Scott-George said.

To the students, she said: “I know that was tough. I knew it would be tough. Why am I giving you challenging problems? Because I expect you can do challenging work.”

Act III, The Flight of Icarus, will feature live music and performances by several groups including Capacitor and Xeno. Price of admission benefits the Crucible, a multi-disciplinary community arts center. $20 at the door.

Berkeley Farmers’ Market

Summer Solstice Celebration

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Civic Center Park

Center St. and MLK Jr. Way

Farmers market plus crafts fair and live reggae and jazz.

548-3333

Strawberry Creek Walking Tour

10 a.m. - Noon

Learn about Strawberry Creek’s history, explore its neighborhoods, and consider its potential. Meet four experts on the local creeks. Reservations required, call 848-0181.

Energy-Efficient Wood Windows

9:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Truitt and White Lumber

642 Hearst Avenue

Free seminar by Marvin Window’s representative Chris Martin on how to measure and install the double-hung Tilt Pac replacement unit, as well as a review of the full line of Marvin’s energy-efficient wood windows.

649-2574

What You Need to Know Before You Build or Remodel

10 a.m. - Noon

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by professional builder Glen Kitzenberger.

525-7610

Choosing to Add On: The Pros and Cons of Building an Addition

Noon - 2 p.m.

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by author/designer Skip Wenz

525-7610

Schools for Chiapas Benefit

7 p.m.

Lost City 23 Club

23 Vistitacion Ave., Brisbane

El Camioncito Escolar Por La Paz en Chiapas

“The Little School Bus for Peace in Chiapas” is coming to the Bay Area after two months on the road accompanying the Zapatistas on their historic march to Mexico City. Benefit show featuring Fleeting Trace and other bands. 18 and over. Ride to the show on “The Little School Bus for Peace in Chiapas.” Meet at the downtown Berkeley BART station on Shattuck at 6 p.m. Sharp!

Our Nations Speak

8 p.m.

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck Avenue

Voices Writing Workshop faculty will read from their works. Proceeds will go to attendees of one of the two week-long workshops who cannot attend without financial support. The Voices Writing Workshop nurtures developing writers through the perspectives of writers of color. $10 donation requested. 415-422-5488

Midsummer’s Festival

1 - 5 p.m.

People’s Park

Telegraph and Haste

Strange News, Something of Substance, and The American Lion perform live to celebrate the park’s 30th summer.

Sunday, June 24

Hands-On Bicycle Repair

Clinics

11 a.m. - Noon

Recreational Equipment, Inc.

1338 San Pablo Ave.

Learn how to fix a flat from one of REI’s bike technicians. All you need to bring is your bike. Free

527-4140

Uncle Eye

2 p.m.

Berkeley-Richmond Jewish

Community Center

1414 Walnut Ave.

Come see Ira Levin, a.k.a. Uncle Eye, give a special performance as a fund-raiser for a television pilot to be filmed this summer. $7 - $10. 848-0237

www.uncle-eye.com

Carefree/Carfree Tour

1 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Artful garden tour, part of the Berkeley Arts Festival. Ride AC Transit to Marcia Donohue and Mark Bulwinkle’s Our Own Stuff Garden and Gallery, then walk to the Dry Garden. 486-0411

Carefree/Carfree Tour #2

1:30 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Ride the bus to the Codornices Creek Restoration Project and the Peralta Community Garden and enjoy a concert by Nicole Miller.

486-0411

Music and Meditation

8 - 9 p.m.

The Heart-Road Traveller

1828 Euclid Avenue

Group meditation using instrumental music and devotional songs. Free. 496-3468

Buddhist Philosophy

6 p.m.

Tibetan Nyingma Institute

1815 Highland Place

Barr Rosenberg, co-dean of the Nyingma Institute, will present some of the central ideas and perspectives of the Madhyamaka School of Buddhism. 843-6812

Monday, June 25

Tectonic Theater Project

7 p.m.

Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater

2015 Addison Street

“Page to Stage: Surviving the Media” is a conversation with the Tectonic Theater Project and professor Douglas Foster. The Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepard and wrote a play about the impact The Laramie Project is running through July 8 at the Berkeley Rep. 647-2900

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips.

Call Don, 525-3565

Wednesday, June 27

Conversations in Commedia

7:30 p.m.

La Pena

3105 Shattuck Ave.

The series pairs radical theater “elders” to share memories of their years in Commedia. This week with former Mime Troupe actress Audrey Smith and Ladies Against Women character Selma Spector. $6 - $8.

849-2568

Disaster Council

7 p.m.

Emergency Operations Center

997 Cedar Street

Update on Measure G.

644-8736

Socratic Circle Discussion

5 p.m.

Cafe Electica

1309 Solano Avenue

Gather for espresso and discussion at the “green” teen cafe. Open to all. Free.

527-2344

Thursday, June 28

Quit Smoking Class

6 - 8 p.m.

South Berkeley Senior Center

2939 Ellis Street

A six week quit smoking class. Free to Berkeley residents and employees.

The Daily Planet received this letter originally addressed to the mayor and council:

We are writing to request your assistance in addressing critical issues related to the March 13, 2001 collision at the intersection of Hearst and Shattuck avenues, which resulted in the death of our friend and co-worker, Jayne Ash.

At the May 17, 2001 Transportation Commission meeting, a report was presented by Reh-Lin Chen, traffic engineer of the Berkeley Public Works Department summarizing the incident and suggesting possible remedies. The report was inadequately investigated, as it focused on the layout of the intersection with only one logistical improvement suggested for that intersection. Further, it focused on the fact that Jayne’s death was the only pedestrian fatality at this particular intersection in the past few years, and deemed it an “isolated case.”

Moreover, the report neglected to consider the density of pedestrian and bicycle accidents within the two-mile radius of the university and downtown. This problem has been acknowledged in Berkeley police reports and verified by our own experience crossing Shattuck Avenue on a daily basis. There have been dozens of collisions, and some deaths, of both pedestrians and cyclists within only a few blocks along this area of Shattuck in the past few years.

We feel strongly that all of the factors contributing to Jayne’s death need to be thoroughly investigated in order to be able to ensure that this type of accident does not occur again, and that some benefit may arise from the death of our healthy, pedestrian-law-abiding co-worker. While we are not traffic safety experts, we believe the following questions must be addressed in order to begin such an investigation, and answers provided to all interested parties:

Collision-specific issues:

• Did the driver see Jayne before hitting her?

• If not, was this due to inattention, light glare, poor vision, impairment due to drugs, a structural defect of the truck, or some other cause or combination of causes?

Commercial and construction issues:

• Was the truck (a concrete pumping truck) traveling to or from a construction site, on an approved route for construction vehicles?

• Was the driver licensed and appropriately trained to drive a commercial vehicle?

• Had the truck been recently inspected for commercial use by an appropriate government agency? Was it inspected immediately after the accident?

Contextual issues

• Are the speed limits and the timing of traffic lights appropriate for the volume of pedestrian and bicycle travel on Shattuck and Hearst avenues?

• Are pedestrian safety laws adequately funded and enforced?

Comprehensive measures are clearly indicated. We understand that the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety (BAPS) Plan, which is currently before the City Council Budget Committee, addresses some of these global issues. We were surprised to learn that the plan was not initially fully funded, and shocked that many portions of the plan that were funded have still not been implemented. Why is this situation continuing, and how will it be rectified?

We strongly urge you to fully fund this plan in the City budget for this fiscal year, and to clearly delineate the persons/offices responsible for each aspect of BAPS implementation, including timelines.

We are committed to ensuring that these issues are resolved immediately. Unfortunately, we have still have not received any answer to our letter of April 5, 2001 that outlines why pedestrian safety in Berkeley is a public health emergency, and should be treated as such. Please let us know who is responsible for responding to this life-threatening situation, and whom we should contact for follow-up.

To Berkeley Daily Planet readers- we urge you to write or call your councilmember to take decisive, immediate action on this public health emergency. One way to contact your councilmember is through the city clerk’s office by email at clerk@ci.berkeley.ca.us.

Joan Sprinson, Berkeley

Melissa Ehman

and 20 others

Readers: the letter that ran Friday called “Beth El Planning process worked” inadvertently had its author’s name omitted. It was written by James H. Samuels AIA, of Berkeley. -editor

Bush here in Berkeley?

Editor:

At the June 13 meeting of the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association, a P.G.&E representative was invited to speak about energy conservation. He explained the current crisis as being generated by a 30 percent growth in demand, while supply has only grown 6 percent. He then presented a series of tips which consisted of replacing light bulbs with more efficient bulbs, cleaning furnace filters regularly and keeping the lint filter and the exhaust vent clean on one’s clothes dryer. He did note that gas dryers were more efficient, and that homes should be insulated and that newer double pane windows saved heat.

No mention was made of the threatened rolling blackouts, or changing energy habits to reduce usage, not even of hanging out clothes to dry in the summer sunshine and heat.

What was presented was the George W. Bush energy plan. That is, you don’t have to give up anything, just tinker here and there and you can continue consuming.

Implied in the opening remarks is the idea that we must increase supply. Bush in Berkeley, what a concept.

John Cecil

Berkeley

Win-win answer for Beth El

Editor:

Why is this Beth El business so complicated? City policy says open the creeks. That is a good thing; opening the creeks will make our community a nicer place to live.

Berkeley is the most densely built city in the area. It is safe to say that open space is more important to us than more buildings.

Right now, we are looking at a vacant lot; if we are going to open the creek, no better time then now. Maybe that means scaling back the project, but I’ve been to the site, and there is plenty of room for anything short of the Taj Mahal. And scaling it back is going to make for a lot of happy neighbors. Open creek; less intrusive buildings; new synagogue; everyone’s happy. Why can’t this work?

And, please, no more letters about how Beth El is such a wonderful community member. Come on guys, this is not about who you are, its about what you’re building – unless you believe that good works should allow you to trample over the interests of your fellow citizens. Let’s just stick talking about how appropriate this structure is for the land, the neighborhood, and the city. OK?

Steen Jensen

Berkeley

Thanks where thanks is due

Editor:

With the improvements to the downtown area partial completed Berkeley citizens have a wonderful opportunity to compare the area before and after improvement. From the Berkeley Public Library building north on Shattuck the messy trees that once cluttered the sidewalk have been replaced by smaller and cleaner trees in the traffic median where they will not block the beautiful signage of the downtown business establishments. The space once taken up by these messy trees are now devoted to lovely poster resistant light posts making for a sterile and shade free plaza like space which will discourage dawdling and surely increase commerce.

Compare this with the area to the south of the library which is still dangerously darkened by the oppressive canopy of foliage from the mature trees that remain, blocking important signs and storefronts and encourage pedestrians to stand or sit still in this high traffic venue.

I hope that after comparing the unimproved with the improved space in downtown Berkeley citizens will give the Downtown Berkeley Association, Mayor Dean and all the city planners and elected officials who fostered these improvements the thanks they are due and remember their work when they offer up further improvements.

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu

The UC Berkeley Art Museum is closed for renovations until the fall.

924 Gilman St. All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted $5; $2 for year membership. All ages. June 23: The Hellbillies, The Fartz, The Tossers, Roundup, The Fightbacks; June 29: Barfeeders, Pac-Men, Hell After Dark, A.K.A. Nothing, Maurice’s Little Bastards; June 30: The Cost, Pg. 99, Majority Rule, 7 Days of Samsara, Since by Man, Creation is Crucifixion; July 6: Victim’s Family, Fleshies, The Modern Machines, Once For Kicks, The Blottos; July 7: The Stitches, Real MacKenzies, The Briefs, The Eddie Haskells, The Spits 525-9926

125 Records Release Party June 30: 9:45 p.m. Anton Barbeau and Belle De Gama will celebrate the release of their albums The Golden Boot: Antology 2 and Garden Abstract respectively. These are the first two albums released on the 125 Records label, founded by Joe Mallon with his winnings from his appearance on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.” $5. Starry Plough 3101 Shattuck Avenue 841-2082

“Kid Kaleidoscope and the Puppet Players” June 24: 2 p.m., Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. The Puppet Players are a multi-media musical theatre group. Their shows are masterfully produced to thrill people of all ages with handmadesets and puppets. Adults $10, Children $5, 2640 College 867-7199

Dramatic Joyce July 3: 7:30 p.m. Dramatic interpretations of the works of James Joyce by local and international actors. Introduction by UC Berkeley Professor John Bishop with commentary by and conversation with the audience. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” Free. Krutch Theater, Clark Kerr Campus 2601 Warring Street 642-2754

“Do You Hear What I Am Seeing?” July 5: 7:30 p.m. One man show by David Norris, a two-hour sampling of Joyce’s works with Norris’ insights. Part of the week-long conference “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge.” $10. Julia Morgan Theater 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822

“The Laramie Project” Through July 22: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (After July 8 no Wednesday performance, no Sunday matinee on July 22.) Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org

“Iphegenia in Aulis” Previews June 23 at 5 p.m., runs June 24 - August 12: Sat. and Sun. 5 p.m. No performances July 14 and 15, special dawn performance on August 12 at 7 a.m. A free park performance by the Shotgun Players of Euripides’ play about choices and priorities. With a masked chorus, singing, dancing, and live music. Feel free to bring food and something soft to sit on. John Hinkel Park, Southhampton Place at Arlington Avenue (different locations July 7 and 8). 655-0813

Films

Berkeley Film Makers’ Festival, June 23, 1 p.m. Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery. Presentation of Six films: The Good War, and Those Who Refused to Fight it (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada Flores), Just Crazy About Horses (Tim Lovejoy and Joe Wemple), Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar (L. John Harris and Bill Hayes), In Between the Notes (William Farley and Sandra Sharpe) and KPFA On The Air (Veronica Selver and Sharon Wood). 2220 Shattuck 486-0411

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541

The feud between a Nazi family and a Jewish family in 1930s Germany provides an updated framework for the strong Subterranean Shakespeare production of “Romeo and Juliet” currently running at LaVal’s in Berkeley.

Added to this, director Yoni Barkan has lifted the opening scene from the musical "Cabaret" and put it near the top of his show. Shakespeare’s story, then, becomes a play within a play, set inside a decadent nightclub environment.

The result is a vivid and rich production, and an excellent example of grassroots theater at its best.

Although this production of "Romeo and Juliet" contains emotional political images of the Nazi/Jewish conflict in 1930s Germany, as the evening unfolds the equally powerful humanity of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers takes center stage.

The result is a striking reminder of the paradox between political life and daily human life, and a reminder of how irrelevant politics can be in the lives of people just trying to live out their personal humanity.

The Sub Shakes production opens with a short, moving scene between Lord and Lady Montegue – Romeo’s parents, in 1930s period dress – as they perform a wordless, heart-felt Jewish candle ceremony at one side of the otherwise darkened theater.

In abrupt cinematic fashion, the production then cuts to the noisy opening of "Cabaret," with the sleazy, sexual emcee (Jeffrey Meanza) singing the famous song from that show ("Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!"), and inviting the audience to enjoy a night of debauch in his S&M-flavored nightclub.

The story then fades to the opening of Shakespeare’s play – a street fight between the feuding Montegue and Capulet families. Fiery Capulet cousin Tybalt (Pete Caslavka) stirs up trouble on the street, dressed as a Nazi brownshirt complete with swastika armband and skinhead haircut.

The emcee lounges on a sofa at the side of the theater and watches the show, as star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet meet at a masquerade ball, fall in love, and begin their tragic journey to death and destruction.

Famous Broadway and Hollywood director Elia Kazan once said that 90 percent of directing lies in the casting. Director Barkan has obviously cast this current show with great thought. He gets effective performances from all of his actors.

Brendan Wolfe is an intense, hormone-crazed Romeo, suddenly distracted by his sexual energy away from the carousing, good old times with his male buddies. Maureen Coyne stands out as Juliet’s gabby, excitable, playful nurse. Her friendly, bawdy relationship with Juliet lubricates that young girl for love.

Bruce Moody is both dirty-minded and tantrum-throwing as Juliet’s father Capulet. The violence in this Nazi story flows easily from his sadomasochistic authoritarianism.

Meanza pulls a strong focus as the leering, oversexed emcee, obviously taking his cue from the Sam Mendes/Alan Cummings revival of “Cabaret” that has made such a splash in recent years.

Karen Goldstein is a crabby Lady Capulet, more concerned with the cotton balls between her toes as she rigs her make-up, than with her daughter. You can see why Juliet doesn’t like her mother.

Armand Blasi is very effective as Friar Lawrence, the churchman who tries unsuccessfully to help the two wayward lovers.

In this production, we first meet the Catholic Friar Lawrence removing his phylacteries. But, hey, life is a cabaret, my friend. And this is a play within a play.

Nicole DuPort is a beautiful Juliet. She seems a less skillful actor than some of the others, but her simplicity with the language, and her youthful, unmodulated diction works well for the character. She and Wolfe have a hot chemistry.

Pete Caslavka has staged some of the best fight choreography I’ve ever seen in the theater. The opening street brawl between the Montegues and Capulets starts with swords, and quickly turns to very realistic punching and kicking. There’s a lot of hurting going on in this show.

Romeo’s slow knifing of Juliet’s cousin Tybalt is like an act of sexual penetration – a reminder of how much this play is about the polar struggles in young men between love and violence.

Jackie Bendzinski and Amoreena Vera have cooked up intriguing period costumes, with a slightly modernized, stylized feel – perfect for the world of imagination inside this cabaret. Dustin O’Neal’s black and red set manages both heaven and hell.

Barkan’s effective sound design includes Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” “Putting on the Ritz,” various 1930s dance band tunes, and some 1960s jazz.

A lot of components come together to make this show work well. Maestro Barkan is a talented director. Last June at LaVal’s he staged a very effective production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as a rave in the woods. This show is even better.

If you’re looking for a strong evening of grassroots theater, look no further.

Planet theater reviewer John Angell Grant has written for "American Theatre," "Back Stage West," "Callboard," and many other publications. E-mail him at jagplays@yahoo.com.

The Cal men’s basketball 2001-2002 schedule was released on Friday, highlighted by the Bears hosting two tournaments at Haas Pavilion.

Ben Braun’s squad will open the year by hosting the Black Coaches Association Classic on Nov. 15-16. The first round games pit the Bears against Princeton and St. Joseph’s against Eastern Washington.

Cal will stay at home through November, as Santa Clara and New Mexico will both pay a visit to Berkeley. The Bears’ first road game will be against South Florida on Dec. 1. Other non-conference foes include Fresno State, which knocked Cal out of the NCAA Tournament in March, St. Louis and Mount St. Mary’s.

The ninth annual Golden Bear Classic will be held Dec. 28-29, with Cal taking on Harvard in the first round. The other first-round game will be Penn State against Coppin State.

Due to the reinstatement of the Pac-10 Conference Tournament at the end of the regular season, the Bears’ two conference matchups with archrival Stanford will be back-to-back, kicking off the league season for both teams. The Cardinal will host the first game on Jan. 4, with the return date at Haas Pavilion slated for Jan. 6.

The Pac-10 Tournament will take place March 7-9 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Tickets for the 2001-02 will go on sale in the fall. Fans can either click on the tickets icon at www.calbears.com or call 1-800-GO-BEARS.

The Bears will have to cope with the loss of senior star and leader Sean Lampley next season, as well as the exit of center Nick Vander Laan, who transferred out of the program. But Braun has brought in one of the best-regarded recruiting classes in the nation for 2001, with center Jamal Sampson, forward Erik Bond and wingman Julian Sensley all considered blue-chip athletes.

OAKLAND – State Sen. Don Perata and representatives from a number of environmental and cancer prevention groups strongly criticized the Bush administration’s environmental policy during a press conference to support a bill to establish higher standards for arsenic in drinking water.

“This bill is a response to (President) Bush’s immediate intention upon his swearing in to begin to relax the standards that we have,” Perata said during the briefing at Lake Temescal Friday. “California cannot wait for the Bush administration to decide on the safety of our drinking water and the fate of our health.”

Perata, who represents the Berkeley-Oakland area, wrote the bill after the Bush administration decided not to pursue former President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reduce the amount of arsenic, a natural but dangerous contaminant in tap water. The measure would require California’s Department of Health Services to conduct a feasibility analysis and to adopt a standard reducing arsenic levels to three parts per billion. Established in 1942, the current standard is 50 parts per billion and represents a cancer risk of one per 100. The bill, SB 463 would also force water providers to better notify their consumers of the adverse health effects from the ingestion of arsenic in water. Exposure to arsenic is known to cause cancer, and it can also lead to heart problems, diabetes, and endocrine system problems.

Perata was not alone in his criticism of the Bush administration. Jon Rainwater, executive director of the California League of Conservation Voters blamed Bush for not setting public health as a priority. “We can not trust President Bush to put the public health before the interests of his campaign contributors,” said Rainwater, adding that the president’s refusal to raise the standard for arsenic may be related to his interest in protecting the mining industry. “The mining industry... released 585 million pounds of arsenic into the environment last year,” he said. “And the same industry pumped $6.5 million into last year’s elections. The largest recipient for that money was President Bush.”

But Republicans see the value in Bush’s decision to drop Clinton’s proposal. “From what I’ve read, the Clinton standard was basically impossible for companies to comply with,” said Robb McFadden, chair of the Berkeley College Republicans. “People who criticize the Bush administration for being environmentally hostile are really doing it for their political purposes.”

The bill recently passed out of the State Senate on a 23-11 vote and will be presented to the Assembly in July. But it still faces strong opposition. Only one water agency in the state, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, supports it. “You would think that water agencies would be on our side,” said Perata. “Nine times out of ten they’re in opposition to our policies.”

The senator attributes this resistance to the water companies’ reluctance to pay the additional costs a higher standard of purification of their product would entail. “This is about money. It’s about requiring someone to make less profit so that somebody else has better health,” he said.

Still, Perata said he is fully confident that the bill will pass in the state legislature and reach Gov. Gray Davis’ office for signature and set an example to the country. “California will set its own standard,” he said. “The state of California will impress upon the nation how we should be governing ourselves with regards to the environment.”

When baseball-great Cal “Iron Man” Ripken, who holds the professional baseball record for playing the most consecutive games, announced he was calling it quits last week it caused more than a few of Elena Griffing co-workers at Alta Bates Hospital to snicker.

Mrs. Griffing, 75, has not taken a sick day since 1952. In her 55-year career as an office manager and laboratory assistant, she has missed a total of three work days.

Mrs. Griffing credits her stamina and energy to her “good Sicilian genes” and her attitude toward work.

Loving your job is one thing but achieving the level of dedication Mrs. Griffing has shown for her responsibilities is another. In 1986 she underwent an appendectomy at Alta Bates. That evening, after most hospital employees had gone home, she donned a bathrobe and made her way to the other side of the hospital to get some work done in her office. “Ya know, you can get four or five hours of good work in after 5 p.m.,” she says.

“She runs around here like that all the time”

Mrs. Griffing appears to have more energy then most people half her age. There is constant activity in the her small fifth-floor office. When the phone isn’t ringing, Dr. Kaplan, who Mrs. Griffing describes as one of the busiest doctors in the hospital, stops in to exchange information with her or a patient pops in to schedule an appointment or just to exchange a few words.

Mrs. Griffing is an attractive woman who has always been a snappy dresser. She is also known to round out her stylish outfits with high-heeled shoes. When she first began working at the hospital, her taste in footwear caused some friction with Alta Alice Miner Bates, the nurse who founded the hospital in 1905.

Miss Bates’ reason for concern suddenly becomes evident when Mrs. Griffing sees a co-worker down the hall whom she has to speak with. She bounds from her chair and trots down the hall balancing on a pair of high-heeled Salvatore Ferragamo spectator pumps.

Another co-worker with a disbelieving look on her face watches as Mrs. Griffing rounds the corner at the end of the hall. “She runs around here like that all the time,” she says.

Berkeley origins

In 1926, Mrs. Griffing was born on Roble Road in Berkeley, the ninth and last child to her Sicilian immigrant parents, Giorgio and Maria Selestre. The Selestres lived on a one-acre piece of land where they had a barn and several cows.

“We only had one cow after I was born. Her name was Baby, but before that we had as many as five and we supplied everyone who lived on Roble and Tunnel Road with milk,” she says.

Mrs. Griffing attended John Muir Elementary, Willard Middle School and Berkeley High School. After graduating high school she took a job in a bank where she worked until 1946 when she became suddenly and mysteriously ill.

Old Blue Eyes

“I had a blood disorder and the doctors said it was from a steady diet of fava beans, which was a traditional staple of my parents,” she says. “But if that was the problem, all of Sicily should have been sick.”

She went to Alta Bates hospital where she spent a lot of time in the clinical laboratory for blood tests. For two months she was treated with blood transfusions. She received 13 units of blood and was still not showing any signs of improvement.

Despite her illness, Mrs. Griffing, a life-long Frank Sinatra fan, attended a week’s worth of his performances at the Golden Gate Theater in March of 1946. “After the performances I was better,” she says. “The doctors suspected it might have something to do with my excitement level during the week.”

Mrs. Griffing, who became a friend of Sinatra’s, keeps a picture of her standing next to him in her office. When she talks about him, her eyes and smile broaden as the timeless bobby socker swoons to life. “He was so accessible in the 40s,” she says. “He was all of 120 pounds and five of that was hair.”

Reluctant frogs

Mrs. Griffing began working in the Alta Bates clinical laboratory the following April. While she was ill, she would often answer phones and do minor secretarial work while she was between treatments. The doctor in charge of the laboratory, Dr. Singman, liked her work and offered a job when another lab assistant quit.

“I didn’t want to go home at night,” she says. “This place was magic to me, there was so much to learn.”

In those days pregnancy tests were carried out by injecting a urine sample from the inquiring patient into a male frog. After 24 hours, a urine sample was taken from the frog, who was sometimes reluctant to produce, and then it was tested for seaman, which would be present if the woman was pregnant.

“I did a little bit of everything in those days and I was an especially good at catheterizing the frogs,” Mrs. Griffing says. “I would try talking to them and tickling them under the chin and if that didn’t work we had to do something.”

Then versus now

Mrs. Griffing, who doesn’t care for computers and still works on an electric IBM type writer, says there are things she misses about the hospital procedures of the past. “In those days it was ‘the patient comes first’” she says. “Today it’s a constant battle for patients’ rights,”

She says there’s so much paperwork for every procedure, the patient often gets lost in the shuffle.

“I’m very lucky to work for Dr. Kaplan,” she says. “He’s an old-style doctor who still puts the patient first.”

Mrs. Griffing says he allows her to take time with the patients who need a little extra explaining about a procedure or can use some advice about dealing with insurance companies.

Mrs. Griffing’s husband, Don, passed away eight and one-half years ago. They never had children – “too busy” – and she now spends much of her spare time raising Camellias and playing with her two dachshunds, Corky and Megan.

Mrs. Griffing says she has no real plans for the future and has told Dr. Kaplan to let her know if she starts forgetting things or gets a little slow. Although one doesn’t have to be around her long to guess that won’t be happening anytime soon.

“I can’t wait to get to work in the morning,” she says with her usual excitement. “How could you stay in one place for so long and not love it?”

After the 1906 earthquake and fire, Jack Jaymont and Pauline Mirandette moved from San Francisco to Berkeley and established a laundry at 2578 Shattuck Ave. This location was just one block south of Dwight Way Station, the hub of a thriving commercial district.

When the first steam trains began running downtown in 1876, Dwight Way Station was the transfer station for a horse drawn streetcar line to the Schools for the Deaf and Blind at the top of Dwight Way. James Barker was the original owner of the land around Dwight Way Station and he hoped that downtown would be located here.

Although Dwight Way Station did not become the center of downtown, a small commercial district was established and several of the more substantial buildings are still standing. On Dwight Way above Shattuck Avenue a number of impressive 19th century homes are still standing. They would have been conveniently located within walking distance of the station.

As was typical during the early part of the century, the Berkeley French Laundry

Former mayor and Berkeley Symphony Orchestra Board member Jeffrey Leiter, center, was honored Thursday night as he prepared to leave Berkeley for a new home in Grass Valley. Leiter served as interim mayor between March and December 1994 when then mayor Loni Hancock left her post for a job in the

former President Clinton’s administration. Leiter served as president of the Berkeley Symphony Board of Directors from 1986 to 1992 during which time the symphony’s budget grew by more than 30 percent.

During that time the symphony moved its performances from the Berkeley First Congregational Church to Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Standing with Leiter at the Thursday night celebration at the Santa Fe Bar and Grill is Hancock, left, and Mayor Shirley Dean, right.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge halted oil and natural gas exploration off central California’s coast Friday, saying the area can’t be drilled or explored until the federal government studies the environmental impacts and the California Coastal Commission approves of the plan.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken is a major blow to petroleum companies that have left their leases dormant while natural gas and oil prices have neared all-time highs. It comes as California struggles through an energy crisis.

Environmentalists hailed the decision, which affects the proposed developments off San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.

“We think it’s a bad idea to have additional oil and gas drilling off the coast,” said Drew Caputo, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

For now, the decision blocks any attempt to build the first new oil platforms off California’s coast since 1994. No drilling to explore for oil deposits has been conducted since 1989.

At issue is an amount of oil that could be large enough to run California’s refineries for two years and fuel five months worth of the state’s natural gas demands.

Those estimates are about one-fifth the amount of energy within Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the Bush administration wants to drill.

Sarah Christie, the Coastal Commission’s legislative coordinator said she hoped that Friday’s decision would not prompt louder calls to drill in the Arctic refuge.

“It’s certainly not the intent ... to push offshore oil exploration into a different but equally sensitive and magnificent and valuable place on the map,” she said.

California sued to block the exploration days after President Clinton’s Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt extended the leases for ten years in 1999.

The lawsuit contended that Babbitt’s decision was subject to review by the state under a federal law giving California authority to determine whether offshore drilling in federal waters is consistent with the state’s coastal protection plans.

Babbitt’s order allowed the companies to begin paperwork on their plans, but banned all physical work on the leases, including drilling wells, until the U.S. Minerals Management Service completed an environmental impact study on new drilling.

Under the Coastal Zone Management Act, amended in 1990, Congress gave states a say in any activity affecting coastal communities.

Mary Nichols, resources secretary to Gov. Gray Davis, said she was gratified by the decision.

“We were really not happy about having to file the lawsuit, but we believed – the governor believed – we were right on the law and it was important to defend California’s right to protect our coast,” Nichols said.

Davis said he will continue working to make sure California’s coastline remains protected.

“Nineteen months ago I said that when it comes to offshore oil leases, California is entitled to be the engine, not the caboose on the train,” Davis said in a statement.

“Should this decision be appealed, I will vigorously pursue all legal remedies to ensure that actions taken by federal agencies concerning leases for oil and gas production along the California coast fully comply with the law.”

The oil companies have paid $1.25 billion for the 40 leases, each covering about a nine square-mile expanse of ocean. The leases were issued between 1968 and 1984. Four of them expired in 1999.

Oil exploration off California’s coast has been an explosive issue since 1969, when a massive oil spill soiled the Santa Barbara coast.

Offshore rigs account for roughly 20 percent of the state’s petroleum production, and offshore gas could prove to be a key resource as California seeks to solve its energy crisis.

The oil companies affected by Friday’s decision include AERA Energy LLC of Bakersfield, Conoco Inc. and Nuevo Energy Co. of Houston; Samedan Oil Corp of Santa Barbara; and Poseidon Petroleum LLC, which could not be located. Calls to the other companies for comment were not immediately returned. The Western States Petroleum Association declined comment.

“I don’t know what the implications are at this point,” said the companies’ attorney, Steven Rosenbaum. He said he had not seen Wilken’s ruling and declined further comment.

“This is good news, Californians prize their coast and additional oil development has no place here,” said Bruce Hamilton, national conservation director for the Sierra Club.

“It’s good to know those promoting it have been set back and eventually we need permanent protection.”

Wilken, in a highly technical ruling, said that the federal government in 1999 illegally extended the companies’ 10-year leases. The extensions are called “suspensions” in legal jargon.

She said the government “must provide the state of California with a determination that its grant of the lease suspensions at issue here is consistent with California’s coastal management program.”

Wilken ordered all leases terminated until the federal Minerals Management Service complies with her order.

SAN DIEGO — Demonstrators who get out of hand at next week’s biotechnology industry convention could get a blast from the newest weapon in the police department’s arsenal.

The Pepperball launcher is designed to pelt people or the area around them with a marble-sized plastic ball that breaks on impact into a dusty cloud of acrid pepper dust. It can fire six rounds per second but, if used as intended, won’t kill anyone.

San Diego police bought two dozen Pepperball launchers and plan to have them ready for the BIO 2001 convention that opens Sunday, said SWAT team commander Lt. Cesar Solis.

“It gives the officers one more option, rather than resort to something that could be lethal,” Solis said.

Police expect thousands of demonstrators to converge on the San Diego Convention Center and have trained to crack down on those who turn violent.

The biggest concerns are the so-called “black blocs” of masked anarchists who brought mayhem to the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and other gatherings of world leaders.

The Seattle protests turned violent and resulted in more than 600 arrests and $2.5 million in vandalism and property damage.

“There will be the heaviest presence of blue uniforms in downtown San Diego that this city has seen in some time,” police spokesman David Cohen said.

He declined to provide numbers or specifics on tactics.

Officers will move quickly to arrest any demonstrators who block intersections and violate laws and get them off the streets for the duration of the convention, which ends Wednesday.

“We will be very aggressive,” Cohen said. “Our goal is to not let it become a Seattle.”

Police and the manufacturers of the non-lethal weapons credit them with saving lives, but not everyone believes they are harmless. Paul Marini, a political activist from Oakland who demonstrated in Seattle, said nonlethal devices such as Pepperball or beanbag guns can cause injuries if the projectiles hit someone in the eye or other sensitive body part.

“It’s an unholy alliance between pepper spray and the rubber bullet,” said Marini, who works with the Midnight Special Law Collective, an organization that provides assistance to demonstrators.

“What they really are is maiming weapons.”

Officials with Jaycor Tactical Systems Inc., the San Diego company that manufactures Pepperball, said their product is unlikely to cause serious injury.

The couple — who have five children, ages 7 to 17, in school – had been complaining about district policies for a decade, Jim Wheeler, superintendent of the school system in this community 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Two months ago, the unemployed couple sent a 15-page letter accusing school officials of giving sexually explicit material to students, among other things, Detective Norm Neiman said. The letter set a Tuesday deadline to resolve the problems.

President Bush nominated conservative Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl of Los Angeles and Republican activist Richard Clifton of Honolulu on Friday to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, considered among the most liberal federal courts in the country.

The lifetime appointments require Senate confirmation. California and Hawaii are both represented by Democratic senators who said they would have to look more closely at the appointments before making a decision.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she has heard from numerous constituents who oppose Kuhl, now a judge at Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“These letters and calls raise a number of issues important to Californians including: the right to choose, civil rights, representation of tobacco companies, privacy rights and whistleblower protection,” Boxer said in a statement Friday. “I am continuing to evaluate this nomination.”

California’s other Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein, promised not to block a vote on Kuhl. Feinstein had raised objections with the White House after it floated Kuhl’s name for the federal bench without consulting California lawmakers.

Feinstein has since “had a chance to discuss it with the White House and now she wants to hear the full case for Judge Kuhl and make a decision,” said the senator’s spokesman, Howard Gantman.

Hawaii’s two Democratic U.S. senators also reserved comment on Clifton.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, who earlier complained that no one had approached him about Clifton’s potential nomination, said Friday he wants to hear the American Bar Association’s evaluation of the appointment. Sen. Daniel Akaka said he sought “the mana‘o (advice) of Hawaii’s legal community. Pending this review, I will reserve judgment and further comment.”

Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano earlier urged opposition to Clifton, whom he said has demonstrated that he “is very partisan.”

“If you want appoint a Republican to the federal judiciary, there are a lot of good Republican lawyers around who are fair, who are objective, who believe in the integrity of the judicial system,” Cayetano said last month. “You don’t need politicians sitting on the bench.”

Clifton, who has been a partner in the firm of Cades Schutte Fleming & Wright since 1977, also has served as volunteer attorney for the local Republican Party in Honolulu and as legal counsel for GOP gubernatorial candidates in Hawaii.

RICHMOND — Shawn Jones, the 10-year-old boy mauled to the edge of life by pit bulls, faced an uphill road to recovery as local law authorities continued the search for the animals on Friday.

Shawn was listed in critical but stable condition at Children’s Hospital Oakland, where he is on a breathing machine, according to hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Romanov.

The dogs tore off his ears during the Monday evening attack. Other wounds on his face, neck and arms are so severe, doctors said they have not been able to close many of them.

Shawn rested Friday with family and hospital personnel at his side.

“We are in the throes right now of trying to save this boy’s life,” said Dr. James Betts, chief of surgery at the hospital. The dogs shook him violently, “like a doll,” Betts added.

Shawn continues to receive rabies shots because two of the three dogs have not been captured and therefore cannot be tested for the disease.

Benjamin Moore, 27, the dogs’ owner was charged Thursday with attempting to hide the three pit bull terriers that brutally mauled Shawn as he rode a new bicycle he had been given for doing well in school.

Moore was being held on $30,000 bail, reduced from the $50,000 set Thursday. His girlfriend, Jacinda Knight, 33, was released from custody Thursday after authorities decided not to charge her.

One of the dogs responsible for the attack was recovered, but two remain on the loose. Police believe Moore hid

those dogs.

Contra Costa County officials have not decided whether to destroy the recovered dog currently being held at an animal shelter in Pinole. Animal officials had a tough time corralling the dog once they found it.

For now, police seem inclined to keep the dog alive because it could be tested to see whether it had been trained to attack humans, Richmond Police Department Sgt. Enos Johnson said.

“It could show through testing and through examination that the dog was aggressive in social behavior,” Johnson said. “It could show any scars from previous fights.”

A $10,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the seizure of the other dogs.

The public has been offering donations to help Shawn’s family. A trust fund has been set up at a Richmond bank, as well as a separate fund where 100 percent of proceeds go directly to aid the Jones family. A manager at the Richmond branch of The Mechanics Bank would not say how much has been donated.

One San Francisco Bay area radio station began taking donations for Shawn’s family Friday morning by auctioning concert tickets and autographed CDs.

The auction items ran out quickly, but calls and cash pledges continued, reaching $12,000 by noon.

•••

Editors note: A trust fund has been established for Shawn and contributions can be sent to Shawn Jones Fund, c/o The Mechanics Bank, 4100 Macdonald Ave., Richmond, CA 94805, account No. 139020128.

LOS ANGELES — An appeals court refused Friday to reverse a judge’s ruling granting parole to a gay man who gunned down his boyhood friend 16 years ago.

The state immediately appealed to the California Supreme Court.

In ordering Robert Rosenkrantz’s release from prison, Superior Court Judge Paul Gutman had ruled Thursday that Gov. Gray Davis has an unlawful blanket policy of denying parole to murderers.

Rosenkrantz’s supporters say he has rehabilitated himself during his time behind bars, but Davis maintains he remains a threat to society.

“We don’t think Mr. Rosenkrantz should be given parole,” Deputy Attorney General Robert Wilson said of the state’s reason for appealing.

It wasn’t immediately clear how soon the California Supreme Court would act on the case after the 2nd District Court of Appeals’ rejection. If the state loses again, Rosenkrantz’s attorney said he expects his client will be freed.

“We hope he will be released, we’re demanding it and there is an order,” Donald Specter said.

Rosenkrantz, 33, was sentenced to 17 years to life for the 1985 murder of a boyhood friend who had revealed his homosexuality to Rosenkrantz’s father. He shot 17-year-old Steven Redman 10 times with a semiautomatic weapon.

Rosenkrantz has been a model prisoner and become an expert with computers during his years in prison. Several lawmakers and even the judge who sentenced him have lobbied for his release.

In his ruling Thursday, Gutman said there was no evidence to support Davis’ contention that Rosenkrantz is a threat.

“While the governor is entitled to express his opinion, the opinion itself must be factually supported and it is not,” the judge ruled.

Gutman further found that Davis denies parole to murderers “regardless of any extenuating circumstances,” a policy the judge said amounts to “actual bias against an entire class of cases.”

Barry Goode, Davis’ legal affairs secretary, reiterated the governor’s contention that he does not arbitrarily rule against granting murderers parole.

Since taking office in 1999, Davis has reversed the state Board of Prison Terms on 47 of 48 cases in which it granted parole to murders. The one exception was for Rose Ann Parker, who shot her abusive boyfriend in 1986 after he threatened to kill her and her son. She was released in December. Rosenkrantz, who is incarcerated at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, was given a release date by the Board of Prison Terms after two courts ruled the board had abused its discretion in denying him freedom. Davis vetoed that decision last October, citing the viciousness of the crime.

SACRAMENTO — Former workers at Duke Energy’s South Bay power plant accused the company of shutting down production units there in what they called a scheme to drive up electricity prices.

Duke officials termed the charges “baseless.”

The former workers told the state Senate Select Committee to Investigate Price Manipulation Friday that officials at the San Diego-area plant ordered power units off-line for apparently unnecessary maintenance; destroyed parts that were needed for repairs; and manipulated the electricity it was feeding the statewide grid.

“This is the first smoking gun that’s appeared — whistleblowers,” said Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is sitting in with the committee. “That is called market manipulation, and that, in effect, ended up costing the ratepayers of California billions of dollars.”

Gov. Gray Davis said the testimony, if true, would provide “very disturbing evidence” that could help the state convince federal regulators to order generators to refund $9 billion in power charges.

State legislators, regulators and prosecutors are investigating whether power generators illegally manipulated the power supply to drive prices to record levels, forcing the state to buy more than $8 billion worth of electricity since January for the state’s three investor-owned utilities.

All three longtime San Diego Gas & Electric employees were laid off in April when Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke completed its two-year acquisition of the former SDG&E plant in Chula Vista.

Mechanics Glenn Johnson and Ed Edwards said they were ordered to shut down machinery for unneeded repairs, and to do so when they didn’t have the necessary parts available to quickly repair the equipment. They said they were ordered to dispose of perfectly good parts that could have been used in those repairs.

“We were told when things were shut down that it was for ’economics,”’ Johnson testified. “Sometimes a unit would be ’down for economics’ for two or three days.”

Duke officials said the plant’s performance belies the workers’ accusations. They said Duke’s four California plants produced 50 percent more electricity last year than in 1999 and are on a pace to improve that performance this year.

The company was so pleased with its unanticipated windfall from soaring energy prices that it threw two prime rib-and-shrimp parties for the plant’s employees, the workers said and Duke vice president Bill Hall acknowledged.

“Duke Energy is not (price) gouging,” Hall said after he was denied a chance to testify at Friday’s hearing. “Duke does not collude with any other entity to drive market prices up.”

Operating decisions were made based on market conditions, Hall said, but he denied illegal collusion or market manipulation that could drive state or federal regulators to step in. “Depending on the amount of supply or demand, some of our units which are in some cases not as efficient as others in the state simply aren’t economic to run,” Hall said. “That’s the market sending a signal, ’We have sufficient supply, we don’t need your less-efficient, more costly units.”’

Operators rapidly cycled the plant’s electricity production “like a yo-yo — up and down, up and down,” former worker Johnson said, in a way that damaged equipment but maximized prices. He, Edwards and assistant control room operator Jimmy Olkjer backed their testimony with copies of control room logs Johnson smuggled out of the plant.

“Duke Energy Trading and Marketing was calling the shots – that’s where they made the money,” Senate Energy Committee Chairwoman Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, said after examining the logs.

Any fluctuations, Hall said, were ordered by the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s power grid, or were needed to meet environmental standards.

Duke destroyed new parts, as the workers testified, Hall said, because they were obsolete or to cut the tax Duke paid on its parts inventory.

But Edwards and Johnson said it cost the company more money to order replacement parts shipped in as needed, in addition to the cost of the lost production.

Duke often ran the plant’s smallest, least-efficient turbine even at a cost of trucking in jet fuel from the Los Angeles area, they said.

Hall countered by saying jet fuel was then cheaper than natural gas, which powered the plant’s other four generators.

Its four California plants have had fewer forced outages than when the plants were operated by the state’s utilities, Duke said, and perform more consistently than the industry average despite running hard during the power crisis that began a year ago.

“All of the spinning and excuse-making goes out the window at some point when you’re confronted with the people actually running the machinery,” said attorney Mike Aguirre, who is suing several power generators and convinced the workers to testify. Duke supplies about 5 percent of California’s electricity at four power plants, including three purchased from Pacific Gas and Electric for $501 million in 1998. It is undertaking a 1,060-megawatt expansion of its Moss Landing power plant.

It confirmed earlier this month that it sold 5,000 megawatt hours of electricity in California for as much as $3,880 per megawatt hour in January – double the rate recently cited by Gov. Gray Davis as an “obscene” example of price gouging.

Duke spokesman Tom Williams said the company will accept the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision to cap the company’s payment at $273 per megawatt hour for the power it sold into California in January and $430 for the power sold in February.

SACRAMENTO — State budget negotiators approved a massive education package Friday that scales back new spending proposals but still increases school funding by $2 billion.

After three weeks of closed-door meetings and sporadic talks, the Legislature’s budget conference committee Friday whisked through its toughest issue – spending for elementary and secondary schools – in less than 30 minutes.

The package eliminates Gov. Gray Davis’ $65 million proposal to extend the middle school year and scales back a performance awards program for schools with the highest test scores.

It includes $300 million to help schools pay rising energy bills. If approved in a final budget plan, each school would receive at least $16,000 to offset electricity costs and launch conservation programs. Those with the most students would receive the largest sums.

The package also contains $220 million for a grant program for low-performing schools.

Davis proposed $570 million in cuts to the education spending plans he proposed in May to boost the state’s reserve fund from $1.1 billion to $3 billion. The governor called for the increased reserves after analysts warned that a sagging economy and stock market could cost the state billions in revenues.

The committee’s education spending trims fell $237 million short of the reduction the governor proposed.

Still, public schools and community colleges will receive $4.4 billion above the minimum they are guaranteed by state law and $2 billion more than they received in the current fiscal year.

• Added $60 million in new spending for higher education. Department of Finance officials said Friday that Davis plans to veto the increases.

• Approved a measure to exempt certain adults from a requirement to be fingerprinted and photographed in order for the children they live with to receive public aid such as food stamps.

• Agreed to remove a September sunset date for the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, which extends state welfare benefits to legal immigrants.

The committee planned to meet into the night Friday to wrap up remaining issues and send a $102.9 billion budget plan to the full Legislature early next week.

Davis has said he will sign a final 2001-02 budget before July 1, when it goes into effect. However, Republican lawmakers have promised to hold up the budget if an automatically triggered quarter-cent sales tax increase is not removed.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration urged the Supreme Court to take up school vouchers Friday, arguing that an Ohio school choice program does not violate the Constitution’s ban on government promotion of religion.

In a friend of the court brief, Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the government’s top lawyer, asked the Supreme Court to hear three appeals that offer an opportunity for a broad ruling on the constitutionality of private school vouchers.

By filing an uninvited brief to the nation’s top court, the Bush administration is signaling its intention to press the case for programs that allow tax dollars to be used to pay student tuition at religious schools.

School vouchers were a centerpiece of President Bush’s education platform during his campaign. Congress rejected vouchers when it recently passed a sweeping education reform package — not enough Republicans backed the idea, and most Democrats oppose vouchers, arguing that they take money away from struggling public schools.

Now the Justice Department has taken up the fight, filing its first brief staking out an ideological position on a case not already under way before the Supreme Court.

The three cases in question all deal with the constitutionality of the Ohio Pilot Project Scholarship Program. The program provides tuition aid to parents of students in failing public schools in Cleveland.

Parents are permitted to use the aid to enroll their children in a private school, including religious schools.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the program on grounds that it violates the First Amendment’s ban on government promotion, or establishment of religion.

The Justice Department argued that the Ohio program follows the model the Supreme Court has set out in previous cases for the acceptable blending of public money and religion.

The program is constitutional, the government argued, because it distributes educational aid neutrally among students without regard to religion. The choice of whether to send children to religious or nonreligious schools is left up to parents.

“All private schools ... are eligible to participate in the program, without regard to whether they are sectarian or not,” the brief said. “Religious schools may benefit under the program only as a result of the independent and private choice of parents to enroll their children in a participating religious school.”

Supporters of the Ohio program argue that vouchers give low-income parents an alternative to local public schools.

Opponents, including the Ohio Federation of Teachers, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union, say it is an illegal use of public money.

Teachers’ unions, who have opposed vouchers, said Bush should not have gotten involved with the case.

“The fact is that two states, California and Michigan, overwhelmingly rejected vouchers this year,” said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association. “They’ve been rejected every time voters had an opportunity to vote against them. They were defeated in both the House and the Senate this year. The American people and Congress are saying they don’t want vouchers. It seems to me the American people and Congress should be listened to.”

Jamie Horwitz, spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers, agreed.

“Time, resources and attention have been squandered on vouchers, instead of investing in proven reform programs,” he said. “The voters know this, a congressional majority knows this. The Bush administration should know better.”

The Supreme Court has declined to review similar cases out of Wisconsin and Maine. The court will make its decision in the fall.

WASHINGTON — Republicans on Friday proposed giving employers ironclad protection from lawsuits under patients’ rights legislation, while Democrats said they were willing to limit, if not eliminate, the liability contained in their bill.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., signaling a partial retreat, noted that Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was crafting a compromise on the issue. “I think that I’m in a position to be supportive of it,” he said. Wrapping up the first week of debate on the measure, Sen. Phil Gramm proposed inserting a provision from Texas patients’ rights law that protects employers from being sued by patients. “Under Texas law employers can’t be sued, no ifs and or buts about it,” said the Texas Republican.

The issue has emerged as a sensitive one in the debate over legislation to regulate HMOs. Republicans argue that exposure to unlimited legal liability will prompt some employers to drop the insurance coverage they provide to their workers.

“If there’s injury, a trial lawyer is going to go after all the pockets of money that are out there, and there’s a big pocket of money out there called the employer,” said Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

The patients’ rights measure, backed by Democratic Sens. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and John Edwards of North Carolina and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, allows suits against employers in some circumstances.

A spokesman for Snowe said the Maine Republican was working with several senators, including Kennedy, Edwards and McCain, but no formal agreement has been reached.

In general, the bill is designed to guarantee patients access to emergency care, the right to see medical specialists and the ability to select a pediatrician as a child’s primary care physician.

There is relatively little disagreement over the extent of the protections to be offered. Major points of contention include where and when patients can bring suits, and when and how state patient protection laws should be pre-empted by the federal government.

Democrats have made patients’ rights their top priority since winning control of the Senate.

There was little more than skirmishing on the floor during the week, capped by a Friday’s vote on a nonbinding provision relating to clinical trials. By a vote of 89-1, lawmakers voted in favor of giving patients access to federally funded or approved clinical trials recommended by their physician.

WASHINGTON — Half the states using the “motor voter” program – which lets a voter sign up while renewing a driver’s license – suffered serious glitches last election. In some cases, Americans were denied ballots, a government review found.

The Federal Election Commission said Friday the problems ranged from motor vehicle departments that failed to forward registration information in a timely manner to forms that were filled out incorrectly.

In all, 23 of the 44 states subject to the National Voter Registration Act reported significant problems with the program.

The number of complaints last fall were triple those of the election in 1998, officials said.

Florida, where vote-counting problems prompted the presidential election stalemate between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, was not among the states reporting serious motor voter problems last fall.

In 18 states, motor vehicle departments had trouble getting registration information to election officials expeditiously – in some cases, in time for voters to be included on rolls on Election Day, the FEC said.

“Some of the states reported voters saying they had registered at the DMV, but come Election Day they were not on the rolls, so there was a breakdown somewhere in the system,” FEC researcher Brian Hancock said.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said its review of the handling of absentee ballots from overseas military personnel found no major problems that would have delayed delivery to election offices last fall.

The review was requested last November by then-Defense Secretary William Cohen after several hundred absentee ballots from troops abroad were rejected in Florida due to flaws such as the lack of signatures or postmarks. Those problems are being examined in a separate study.

The motor voter law was enacted in 1995 to make it easier for voters to register, allowing voters to register by mail and when they renew driver’s licenses, register cars or apply for various government benefits.

The FEC said it received hundreds of calls from voters who said they went to the polls last November only to be told they couldn’t vote because motor vehicle offices never sent their registration forms to election officials.

High turnover among motor vehicle workers is a big part of the problem, officials said.

“When the law was passed, most of the states did a very, very good job in training the people there,” Hancock said. “I think maybe the training has not been ongoing in many states.”

One state where poll workers turned away voters who thought they registered at motor vehicle offices was Arizona, where Bush defeated Gore by about 96,000 votes.

In many cases, motorists checked off a box indicating they wanted to register to vote, but motor vehicle workers failed to make sure they also filled out a registration form, state election director Jessica Funkhouser said. She said she was not ruling out the possibility that offices also failed to turn in forms.

Funkhouser said such instances were too few to have made much of a difference in the presidential vote totals. Still, Arizona is taking steps to improve its program.

The state is working on a computer program that will require motor vehicle workers to complete voter registration questions, and had already reduced worker errors by expanding training before last year’s election, Funkhouser said.

I have an older car (1966 Jaguar) that diesels, or keeps running, for several seconds after the engine is turned off.

Then it finally dies with quite a clatter. Is there anything that would cause this besides carbon buildup in the combustion chamber? If it is carbon buildup, is there any cure other than to remove the head and scrape off the carbon?—Thomas

RAY: It probably IS carbon buildup, Thomas.

But there are also several other possibilities.

TOM: If the engine is running too hot, it can diesel. Even after you turn off the ignition, there can still be enough residual heat in the engine to keep combusting fuel, even without the benefit of a spark.

RAY: Timing that's too advanced can make the engine run too hot and too fast. That combination can also cause dieseling.

So both of these possibilities should be investigated.

TOM: But when you determine that it IS carbon, you have to get rid of it somehow.

One technique that's worked for years is to trickle some water into the carburetors.

You don't want to use your garden hose here, but if you pour a very slight, continuous trickle of water into the throat of the carburetor while the engine is revving at 2,500 or 3,000 rpm, you might steam enough carbon off of the pistons to make a difference.

RAY: Of course, you might also hydro-lock your engine and ruin it. So be careful not to use too much water at one time.

TOM: If the water doesn't do it, you might have to try one of the products specifically designed for this purpose, like Chevron's Techron (available in stores) or 44K from BG Products (800-961-6228 or www.bgprod.com).

RAY: And if you still have no luck, then you have to take the head off and scrape the carbon from the pistons with your false teeth ... or some other blunt instrument. Good luck, Thomas.

•••

Got a question about cars? e-mail them by visiting the Car Talk section of cars.com on the World Wide Web..

One day last week a high-tech company whose stock had collapsed from more than $170 to $3 and change in little more than a year, revealed that conditions were even worse than he had anticipated.

The company, Exodus Communications Inc., already had reported a first-quarter loss of $650 million, which was bad enough. But now it was running low on cash and its business was not recovering as expected.

If company officials, equipped with computers and software able to sop up every nuance in the marketplace, were caught unaware, their shock was matched by that of investors who had relied on information from “experts.”

The experts were brokerage house stock analysts, calculating types who earn six-figure annual incomes for dissecting the finances of companies they cover, issuing recommendations and, often, publicizing their firms. Many if not most of them had advised investors to buy Exodus. In fact, some had been so advising investors since Exodus was trading in triple digits. They indicated they had not anticipated Exodus’ dismal news. Within a couple of days or sooner, they rushed to cleanse the record. Salomon Smith Barney downgraded Exodus stock to “neutral” from “buy.” UBS Warburg cut its price target to $3 from $15. Lehman dropped its advice from “buy” to “market perform.” All after the fact.

Too often during the long decline in stock prices investors had observed the same thing: Buy recommendations on declining stocks from advisers who claim to see ahead. At one point when the Nasdaq composite index was down 60 percent, almost all recommendations were to buy.

For a marketplace that depends on investor trust and confidence the consequences could be deadly. Investors, portfolios depleted, now wonder if they were duped. Conflict of interest accusations have been made. Are analysts hucksters or advisers?Recognizing the dangers, the Securities Industry Association, a major trade group, has endorsed a “best principles” set of guidelines that it believes might quiet suspicions and restore confidence levels.

Among other things, the principles encourage a wall being erected between analysts and other, profit-seeking activities of their firms. And it would prohibit analysts from trading against their own recommendations.

But the principles are voluntary, and so might be insufficient to the task. Already feeling deceived, investors might be excused if they question soft discipline.

Whatever the resolution, the stock market’s confidence problem depends on assurance of a free flow of quality information as certainly as the welfare of society in general depends on a flow of good water. In the view of many, some of the information seems tainted if not plain polluted.

It begins not with Wall Street but with corporations and industries, where officials, though equipped with computers and software that sop up every nuance of the marketplace, still can’t forecast their own markets. In evidence, one chief executive officer after another — at Nortel, Lucent, JDS Uniphase, Xerox, to name a few — has conceded in recent weeks a failure to anticipate major changes occurring just weeks ahead. Analysts, then, might be forgiven for not having had insight superior to that of the company’s chief. But even if such insight were possible, the suspicions may remain.

The questions have been raised and the fears expressed that in one way or another the information that flows through Wall Street might emerge tainted. So tainted it isn’t to be believed.

SACRAMENTO — Tower Records, a worldwide music, book and video retailer that began in a family drug store, is downplaying the possibility it may have to file for bankruptcy because of tightening credit.

“We have no present intention to file bankruptcy,” company spokeswoman Louise Solomon said Friday, two days after Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Tower’s debt ratings.

Moody’s said it was likely that Tower would file for bankruptcy protection if it could not find additional sources of capital or pay off its current loans in the next few months

In a recent Securities and Exchange Commission report, Tower said its revolving credit facility had been extended for a year, but that the amount the company could borrow had dropped from $275 million to about $225 million.

That’s enough to cover the company’s current needs, Moody’s said, but under the new agreement with lenders the amount of credit available to Tower will drop to $210 million in July, to $195 million in October and to $100 million by December.

Tower said in a statement that it was “actively seeking further external financing.”

Solomon stressed that there was no mention in the SEC report about filing for bankruptcy.

The 41-year-old company has seen its revenue flatten out in recent years as it’s battled competition from aggressive online sellers like Amazon.com and mass merchants like Borders.

In its SEC statement, Tower reported $34.4 million in losses for the quarter ending April 30, compared to a $4.3 million loss in the same period in 2000.

Tower said a large part of the loss was attributable to costs involved in closing “underperforming” stores. The company closed 10 stores and opened one in that three-month period, according to the SEC statement.

The company also said it is negotiating the sale of its operations in Argentina, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Net revenue for both quarters was $255 million.

Michael Solomon, Tower’s president and chief executive officer, said the company was encouraged by the “revenue stability for the quarter at a time when the revenue trend in retail is down.”

Besides closing the low-performing stores, Tower has eliminated a number of inefficiencies in its operations as part of a restructuring plan.

“We expect positive contributions from that strategy in the quarters ahead,” he said.

Solomon’s father, Russell, started selling records out of his family’s drug store and opened the first Tower Records in 1960 in Sacramento. The company, based in neighboring West Sacramento, now runs 187 stores worldwide.

Judah L. Magnes Museum “Telling Time: To Everything There Is A Season” through May 2002. An exhibit structured around the seasons of the year and the seasons of life with objects ranging from the sacred and the secular, to the provocative and the whimsical. 2911 Russell St. 549-6950

The Asian Galleries “Art of the Sung: Court and Monastery.” A display of early Chinese works from the permanent collection. “Chinese Ceramics and Bronzes: The First 3,000 Years,” open-ended. “Works on Extended Loan from Warren King,” open-ended. “Three Towers of Han,” open-ended. $6 general; $4 seniors and students age 12 to 18; free children age 12 and under; free Thursday, 11 a.m. to noon and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 642-0808

UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Lobby, Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” ongoing. A 20 by 40-foot replica of the fearsome dinosaur made from casts of bones of the most complete T. Rex skeleton yet excavated. When unearthed in Montana, the bones were all lying in place with only a small piece of the tailbone missing. “Pteranodon” A suspended skeleton of a flying reptile with a wingspan of 22-23 feet. The Pteranodon lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Free. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. 642-1821

UC Berkeley Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology “Approaching a Century of Anthropology: The Phoebe Hearst Museum,” open-ended. This new permanent installation will introduce visitors to major topics in the museum’s history. “Ishi and the Invention of Yahi Culture,” ongoing. This exhibit documents the culture of the Yahi Indians of California as described and demonstrated from 1911 to 1916 by Ishi, the last surviving member of the tribe. $2 general; $1 seniors; $.50 children age 17 and under; free on Thursdays. Wednesday, Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Kroeber Hall, Bancroft Way and College Ave. 643-7648

Holt Planetarium Programs are recommended for age 8 and up; children under age 6 will not be admitted. $2 in addition to regular museum admission. “Constellations Tonight” Ongoing. Using a simple star map, learn to identify the most prominent constellations for the season in the planetarium sky. Daily, 3:30 p.m. $7 general; $5 seniors, students, disabled, and youths age 7 to 18; $3 children age 3 to 5 ; free children age 2 and younger. Daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Centennial Drive, UC Berkeley 642-5132 or www.lhs.berkeley.edu

924 Gilman St. All shows begin at 8 p.m. unless noted $5; $2 for year membership. All ages. June 22 Hoods, Fall Silent, Clenched Fist, Osiva, Hellcrew; June 23 The Hellbillies, The Fartz, The Tossers, Roundup, The Fightbacks; June 29 Barfeeders, Pac-Men, Hell After Dark, A.K.A. Nothing, Maurice’s Little Bastards; June 30 The Cost, Pg. 99, Majority Rule, 7 Days of Samsara, Since by Man, Creation is Crucifixion 525-9926

Kalanjali in Concert June 22, 7 p.m. Kalanjali concludes its celebration of its 25th year in Berkeley with a special recital. Experienced dancers and young students, with guests from India including dancer K. P. Yesoda and the musicians of Bharatakalanjali. $6 - $8 Juia Morgan Center for the Arts 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300

“The Laramie Project” Through July 8: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org

“Kid Kaleidoscope and the Puppet Players” June 24: 2 p.m., Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. The Puppet Players are a multi-media musical theatre group. Their shows are masterfully produced to thrill people of all ages with handmadesets and puppets. Adults $10, Children $5, 2640 College 867-7199

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822

Films

Berkeley Film Makers’ Festival, June 23, 1 p.m. Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery. Presnetation of Six films: The Good War, and Those Who Refused to Fight it (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada Flores), Just Crazy About Horses (Tim Lovejoy and Joe Wemple), Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar (L. John Harris and Bill Hayes), In Between the Notes (William Farley and Sandra Sharpe) and KPFA On The Air (Veronica Selver and Sharon Wood). 2220 Shattuck 486-0411

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541

When Robert and Dorothy Bryant (6/21) suggested donating tax refund checks to a favored charity (preferably one Bush hates), they wrote that it was difficult to choose just one charity from a list they could not even name. While their decision to donate to the Library Foundation was a very good one, I’d like to offer another choice to those who agree with the Bryants.

Endorse your check over to the Berkeley Community Fund (2320 Shattuck Avenue, Suite A; Berkeley, CA, 94704; 843-5202). As a community foundation, we consider it a serious responsibility to know about the nonprofit organizations serving our city. We encourage proposals from small, innovative, “below the radar” organizations you might never know about, as well as from long-established ones. All of our grantees have programs in areas that match our mission of narrowing inequities within our community and creating hope and opportunity for disadvantaged youth. All of them provide their services in BERKELEY.

Our staff and board carefully review every grant proposal, including the organization’s financial information and history. Each grant cycle, though, we have to turn down proposals from organizations doing wonderful, important work in our community simply because our funding is limited. While I doubt President Bush could really hate any of our grantees, many of them are too small, too local, or too innovative to benefit from federal programs. Your gift would make a real difference right here in Berkeley.

And here is the very BEST part: every cent of your gift will go to grants. How can this be? Our Board of Directors covers all administrative costs of the Fund from their own pockets! This is something very few foundations can say (and something very few in Washington D. C. would even believe).

Lisa Allphin

Executive Director, Berkeley Community Fund

EIR failed to look at cumulative traffic

The Daily Planet received the following letter addressed to Mayor Shirley Dean:

During the June 5 City Council hearing on 1301 Oxford St., you asked me a good question regarding the current impact of Congregation Beth El’s Saturday morning parking on the neighborhood that includes both the current site of the congregation and the proposed future site between Oxford and Spruce streets. Your question deserves a better and more detailed answer than I was able to provide at the time.

Indeed, the fact that you had to ask the question, and my inability to provide more than an anecdotal answer, are both testimony to the inadequacy of the Environmental Impact Report, which could and should have answered the question but did not. While acknowledging that neighbors had expressed concerns about the current, existing facility, the final EIR states that “it is not within the bounds of CEQA to appraise the operational conditions and capacities of the existing Congregation facility.” This was their conclusion in the face of numerous letters and testimony from neighbors that during the frequent Saturday Bar Mitzvahs at the present site, the neighborhood is indeed “parked up” between Cedar and Rose streets on Spruce and Arch, on Eunice between Cedar and halfway up Spring Way, and on Vine from near Hawthorn Terrace to Oxford St.

Worse yet, the EIR specifically declined to examine what it acknowledged is a “potential for cumulative (parking) impacts if both the existing and proposed sites of Congregation Beth El are operated with institutional uses,” as will clearly be the case. It also totally ignores the cumulative impact of parking at the proposed site in combination with the Berkeley-Richmond Jewish Community Center, which is one and a half blocks away. These two institutions offer virtually the same programs and services, and they share the same operating calendar. When they start doing so within a block and a half of one another, they will find themselves in fierce competition for the same few available parking spaces, and those who live in the neighborhood will be caught in the squeeze. Imagine the additional impact when yet another institution starts using Beth El’s Arch St. site!

Unfortunately, neither the drafters of the EIR nor the city staff nor the ZAB members dared to imagine such a thing. The EIR almost casually dismissed the problem with the observation that “a more detailed analysis of the potential cumulative (parking) impacts of operation of Congregation Beth El and the existing Arch/Vine site (by another religious institution) is not possible since no new use has been proposed for that site.”

What we are left with is totally inadequate data and analysis, which should be more than sufficient grounds for the City Council to decertify the ZAB report and require a new report, with reliable, objective data that will respond to your own very relevant question.

Jon Stewart

Berkeley

Beth El planning process worked

Editor:

In a recent article, Kevin Powell claims that in the case of the Congregation Beth El Synagogue and School project, the City Planning process has been dysfunctional. Nothing can be further from the truth. Mr. Powell cites the unprecedented turnout (some 450 people) as evidence for his claim. He fails to mention that about 85 percent of the turnout were Beth El supporters. This expression by Beth El members, by Berkeley clergy, by Camp Kee Tov bus drivers, and by neighbors who are not Beth El members reflects the breadth and depth of support for this fine project.

Remarkably, in Mr. Powell’s long article about process, he has only one sentence about the EIR. He claims that although the EIR dissected the project in extraordinary detail, it did not guide ZAB’s decision. Mr. Powell is simply wrong. The EIR was a central event in the planning process. The EIR concluded that the project would have no significant environmental impacts that cannot be mitigated.

The final EIR contained responses to the extensive public comments made during this process. The EIR also included the significant ruling by the city attorney that no Berkeley ordinances or policies require the daylighting of Codornices Creek. Mr. Powell should have been at the numerous EIR discussions at ZAB. ZAB members discussed the three thick volumes, the analysis of parking, traffic, storm run-off, fish, sound, trees and the other environmental issues surrounding the project. ZAB members reviewed in detail the work of the team of engineering and environmental specialists.

This EIR went far beyond the scope of a standard EIR. It had an additional section analyzing planning and zoning impacts that are not “environmental impacts” under EIR law. It did so explicitly for the guidance of ZAB. ZAB used that analysis in coming to its decision to certify the EIR as complete and, ultimately, to revise and approve the project.

Mr. Powell would also have a different perspective of this process if he read the numerous City Planning Staff reports issued during the course of 13 ZAB public hearings - they represent many hours of time and effort. Significant among these were the detailed parking analysis of the staff. As is now well known, Berkeley has no specific parking requirements for religious institutions, this being determined on a case by case basis. As it was ZAB responsibility to determine the parking for Beth El, staff aided the ZAB by first reviewing the Fehr & Peers and CCS Engineering traffic and parking studies. Staff then analyzed other local projects, surveyed other localities in California and reviewed how Berkeley’s policies and treatment of parking have evolved over the years. This resulted in a staff recommendation of 1 space per eight seats in the sanctuary formula (31 spaces) which the ZAB eventually approved on March 8.

Mr. Powell also complains that there was little change in the plans during the ZAB hearings. But the original application reflected the most important of the values urged upon Beth El by the neighborhood. And there were numerous significant changes made during the ZAB process. The huge crowd in support of the project demonstrates that this is a balanced project.

Friday, June 22

Hear and entertain the ideas of some modern day philosophers: Jacob Needleman, J. Revel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty and others. Every Friday, except holidays. Facilitated by H.D. Moe.

Therapy for Trans Partners

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Center for Human Growth

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522

City Commons Club,

Luncheon and Speaker

11:45 a.m.

Berkeley City Club

2315 Durant Ave.

This week featuring Jeffrey Riegle, Ph.D., on “Historical Reasons for China’s Current Conduct.” Come early for social hour. Lunch at 11:45 for $11-$12.25. Come at 12:30 to hear the speaker only for $1, students free. Reservations required for three or more.

848-3533

Schools for Chiapas Benefit

7 p.m.

Shattuck Down-Low Lounge

2284 Shattuck

El Camioncito Escolar Por La Paz en Chiapas

“The Little School Bus for Peace in Chiapas” is coming to Berkeley after two months on the road accompanying the Zapatistas on their historic march to Mexico City. Ride in the bus, enjoy music and support Schools for Chiapas. Featuring Bay Area bands Fleeting Trace, Bern and others. Age 21 and over. $5 - 10 sliding scale.

415-699-5686

Saturday, June 23

“Feast of Fire” benefit

for the Crucible

10:30 p.m.

The Crucible

1036 Ashby Ave.

Act III, The Flight of Icarus, will feature live music and performances by several groups including Capacitor and Xeno. Price of admission benefits the Crucible, a multi-disciplinary community arts center. $20 at the door.

Berkeley Farmers’ Market

Summer Solstice Celebration

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Civic Center Park

Center St. and MLK Jr. Way

Farmers market plus crafts fair and live reggae and jazz.

548-3333

Strawberry Creek Walking Tour

10 a.m. - Noon

Learn about Strawberry Creek’s history, explore its neighborhoods, and consider its potential. Meet four experts on the local creeks. Reservations required, call 848-0181.

Energy-Efficient Wood

Windows

9:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Truitt and White Lumber

642 Hearst Avenue

Free seminar by Marvin Window’s representative Chris Martin on how to measure and install the double-hung Tilt Pac replacement unit, as well as a review of the full line of Marvin’s energy-efficient wood windows. 649-2574

What You Need to Know Before You Build or Remodel

10 a.m. - Noon

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by professional builder Glen Kitzenberger.

525-7610

Choosing to Add On:

The Pros and Cons of

Building an Addition

Noon - 2 p.m.

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by author/designer Skip Wenz 525-7610

Schools for Chiapas Benefit

7 p.m.

Lost City 23 Club

23 Vistitacion Ave., Brisbane

El Camioncito Escolar Por La Paz en Chiapas

“The Little School Bus for Peace in Chiapas” is coming to the Bay Area after two months on the road accompanying the Zapatistas on their historic march to Mexico City. Meet at the downtown Berkeley BART station on Shattuck at 6 p.m. Sharp!

Sunday, June 24

Hands-On Bicycle Repair Clinics

11 a.m. - Noon

Recreational Equipment, Inc.

1338 San Pablo Ave.

Learn how to fix a flat from one of REI’s bike technicians. All you need to bring is your bike. Free

527-4140

Uncle Eye

2 p.m.

Berkeley-Richmond Jewish

Community Center

1414 Walnut Ave.

Come see Ira Levin, a.k.a. Uncle Eye, give a special performance as a fund-raiser for a television pilot to be filmed this summer. $7 - $10.

848-0237 www.uncle-eye.com

Carefree/Carfree Tour

1 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Artful garden tour, part of the Berkeley Arts Festival. Ride AC Transit to Marcia Donohue and Mark Bulwinkle’s Our Own Stuff Garden and Gallery, then walk to the Dry Garden. 486-0411

Carefree/Carfree Tour #2

1:30 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Ride the bus to the Codornices Creek Restoration Project and the Peralta Community Garden and enjoy a concert by Nicole Miller.

486-0411

Music and Meditation

8 - 9 p.m.

The Heart-Road Traveller

1828 Euclid Avenue

Group meditation using instrumental music and devotional songs. Free. 496-3468

Buddhist Philosophy

6 p.m.

Tibetan Nyingma Institute

1815 Highland Place

Barr Rosenberg, co-dean of the Nyingma Institute, will present some of the central ideas and perspectives of the Madhyamaka School of Buddhism. 843-6812

— compiled by Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole

Monday, June 25

Tectonic Theater Project

7 p.m.

Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater

2015 Addison Street

“Page to Stage: Surviving the Media” is a conversation with the Tectonic Theater Project and professor Douglas Foster. The Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepard and wrote a play about the impact Shepard’s death, and the following media scrutiny, had upon the small community. The Laramie Project is running through July 8 at the Berkeley Rep.

647-2900

What You Need to Know Before You Build or Remodel

7 - 9 p.m.

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by professional builder Glen Kitzenberger.

525-7610

NOW Meeting

6:30 p.m.

Mama Bears Book Store

6537 Telegraph Avenue

The general meeting of the National Organization for Women.

Tuesday, June 26

Saranel Benjamin of Globalization

7 p.m.

Oakland YMCA

1515 Webster Street, Oakland

Saranel Benjamin, trade unionist from South Africa, will discuss the impact of corporate globalization on South African workers. Sponsored by Berkeley’s Women of Color Resource Center.

848-9272

Berkeley Camera Club

7:30 p.m.

Northbrae Community Church

941 The Alameda

Share your slides and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips.

Call Don, 525-3565

Wednesday, June 27

Conversations in Commedia

7:30 p.m.

La Pena

3105 Shattuck Ave.

The series pairs radical theater “elders” to share memories of their years in commedia. This week with former Mime Troupe actress Audrey Smith and Ladies Against Women character Selma Spector. $6 - $8.

849-2568

Disaster Council

7 p.m.

Emergency Operations Center

997 Cedar Street

Update on Measure G.

644-8736

Thursday, June 28

Quit Smoking Class

6 - 8 p.m.

South Berkeley Senior Center

2939 Ellis Street

A six week quit smoking class. Free to Berkeley residents and employees.

Meet with East Bay job seekers while listening to music by DJ and Emcee Marty Nemko. Also, cash bar, free hors d’oeurves, and prize giveaways. Free and open to the public. Call 251-1401.

www.eastbaytechjobs.com/mixer/

Friday, June 29

Living Philosophers

10 a.m. - Noon

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Hear and entertain the ideas of some modern day philosophers: Jacob Needleman, J. Revel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty and others. Every Friday except holidays. Facilitated by H.D. Moe.

Therapy for Trans Partners

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Center for Human Growth

2712 Telegraph Ave.

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.

$8 - $35 sliding scale per session

Call 548-8283 x534 or x522

Strong Women: Arts, Herstory and Literature

1:15 - 3:15 p.m.

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave.

Taught by Dr. Helen Rippier Wheeler, author of “Women and Aging: A Guide to Literature,” this is a free weekly cultural studies course in the Berkeley Adult School’s Older Adults Program.

Don’t go to the Berkeley Stamp Company to beef up your postage stamp collection.

“We get people in every so often looking for that,” said owner W. H. Ellis, with a smile. The modest store with the sign that boasts “Since 1929” caters not to philatelists but to corporations, turning out office signs, name plates and plaques.

And don’t mention retirement to Ellis, who turns 89 this month and has been with the company from the beginning.

A slight but active man with twinkling brown eyes, Walter Herbert Ellis was just 17 when his father, Herbert Ellis, was laid off from his job as an office manager on the eve of the Great Depression. The senior Ellis decided to launch his own office-supply business from the basement of the family home on Josephine Street, and the younger Ellis, third of seven children, went to work for his dad.

It wasn’t always fun working in such close quarters, Ellis said. But the H.R. Ellis Company grew slowly and steadily. H.R. Ellis retired in the late 1940s and his son took over, moving the company into a University Avenue storefront in 1952, where it has remained ever since. He changed the name to Berkeley Stamp Company, but the vintage sign hanging outside proudly reminds passersby that this is a company that’s been around for more than 70 years.

Ellis’ family spans quite a stretch of history. His parents met on Alcatraz when the island served as an Army base. His mother was a San Francisco native and his father came from Pennsylvania to fight in the Spanish-American War. Ellis was born in San Francisco, but grew up in Berkeley. He remembers the Key Route System that preceded BART, and says his father gave the Westbrae station its name. “The sign said Albany, but it wasn’t in Albany, it was in Berkeley,” he said. “My father wrote (officials) a letter and suggested Westbrae.”

Ellis graduated from Berkeley the year after his father began the company, and worked at the business until 1943, when he enlisted in the Navy. After three years on a troop transport ship, he came back to Berkeley and the family business. Soon thereafter, his father turned the reins over to him.

When Ellis began working for his father, print jobs meant setting type by hand. The company made rubber stamps using a vulcanizing machine that pressed the rubber into molds. The vulcanizer, long unused, still sits in a back corner of the shop, near a stack of metal molds that are also gathering dust.

Today, it’s all done by computer. On a recent day, employee Steve Patton was seated at the computer, pulling up a fancy font for an engraved invitation. On a nearby desk are scattered colorful plastic name tags, some for a church, some for a local pet food store. Patton simply scans the company logo and engraves it on the tags using a laser machine.

While technology has made work easier, it’s also taken its toll on the business. “It’s dropped off quite a bit,” Ellis said, musing back over the past few decades. “The computers have taken over.”

There is far less demand for personalized stationery, business cards, or other documents, which professionals can now create on their own desktops. Business rubber stamps are slowly becoming extinct. Where Ellis once employed eight people, he now has a staff of three. The business today is mostly name plates and plaques, such as one listing the winners in an area bowling league. Major clients include the University of California and Peet’s Coffee, which buys individualized labels for its various coffee blends.

Ellis still works full time every day. But he says he’s planning to cut back to half time, any day now. “My wife wants to see more of me.” He fairly beams when he mentions his second wife, Patricia, an organist at the Unitarian Church in Kensington. He met her about seven years ago, following the death of his first wife. “I wish you could meet Pat,” he says, looking around as if she might appear. “She’s really something.” He speaks with pride of her many abilities – she keeps the books for the store – and her large social circle. “You wouldn’t believe how many people she knows – oh, it’s amazing.”

His wife’s music and social engagements will certainly keep him busy in semi-retirement, and Ellis has projects of his own. “I need to catch up on my reading,” he said. “I follow the stock market.” Though he has no children of his own, he speaks warmly of his stepson, and his stepdaughter, whom he recently gave away at her marriage. His zest for life clearly remains undiminished. He speaks with delight of his home in Kensington, which has Bay views and shade trees.

But don't expect W. H. Ellis to spend all his time at home. Retiring completely from the job he’s held since he was a teenager seems inconceivable. “I like coming in here, seeing the customers and talking to them.”

Sometime late on Saturday night, a plane will be landing in Cuba carrying with it historic significance. On it will be 58 Americans, which is unusual enough for a country that has been at odds with the United States for most of the 20th century. And among the company will be several Berkeley representatives.

The Oakland Rattlers AAU baseball team will be the first high-school-age team to tour the last bastion of communism since the U.S. embargo was enacted in the early 1960s. The 16-and-under team has three players who also play for Berkeley High: Cole Stipovich, Andre Sternberg and Ryan Nelson.

Stipovich, who has played for Rattlers’ head coach Eddie Abrams for two years, was one of the first kids Abrams recruited for his new team from his old team, the Oakland Oaks.

“He told us he was going to make a new team with us and a bunch of other players, Stipovich said. “The trip came along after that, so I was one of the first to know about it, and I got pretty excited.”

The Rattlers were chosen mostly due to Abrams’ reputation for fielding highly successful teams, but also because he puts together racially diverse squads.

“It’s very important to the Cubans that the team not be lily-white,” assistant coach Jim Stipovich said. “When we play in national tournaments, so many of the teams don’t have any minorities. It’s almost shameful.”

The team will be accompanied by a crew from Fox Sports World, which will be creating a documentary on the unique trip.

The trip will be one week long, with the first day dedicated to sightseeing in Havana. The team will play doubleheaders against the Cuban junior Olympic team on Monday and Tuesday, then visit the National Sports School in Havana on Wednesday. Thursday will bring another doubleheader, but the two teams will mix and play together. The final day of the trip will consist of a dinner with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, himself a former ballplayer.

According the elder Stipovich, the Rattlers are set on sweeping the two formal doubleheaders.

“We want to show them what we’ve got,” he said. “But the Cubans are going to be desperate to win on their own turf, in front of their fans. All the pressure will be on them.”

Members of Berkeley’s African American community – church leaders, community leaders, parents, teachers, and students – turned out en masse at the Wednesday night School Board meeting to denounce the school district for not doing enough to help students of color improve their academic skills.

“The level of disenchantment with this school district by black people in particular, and people of color in general, is rather astounding,” said Alex Papillon, president of the Berkeley Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In a separate meeting last week at St. Joseph the Worker Church, members of Berkeley’s Latino community listed grievances against Berkeley High School, arguing that their children are receiving a second-class education through the school’s English Language Learner program.

On Wednesday, African Americans also focused their complaints on the high school, arguing that the administration has done nothing to address the achievement gap and is even turning its back on a popular, parent-backed program aimed at addressing the issue.

Concerned that 242 Berkeley High freshman were in danger of failing two or more classes midway through the first semester this year, the group Parents of Children of African Descent (PCAD) took a plan for intervention to the school board in January. The school board later joined the city in giving PCAD the money it needed to launch its program for eight months – from the beginning of the second semester to the end of the summer.

The program they called “Rebound” took 50 of the 180 students who finished the semester with failing grades in two or more classes and placed them in smaller classes of longer duration, where teachers could give students more one on one attention.

According to statistics presented to the school board by Rebound supporters Wednesday, Rebound students’ grades and attendance improved dramatically in just their first few months in the program.

The statistics compare 30 Rebound students to a “control group” of 30 freshman from similar racial and economic backgrounds who were also failing two or more classes at the end of the first semester but did not join Rebound.

Of the 30 students in the control group, all were failing English at the end of the first semester and 26 were still failing midway through the second semester. Of the 30 Rebound students, 29 were failing English at the end of the first semester but only 11 were still failing the class midway through the second semester.

Rebound students posted similar grade gains over their peers in algebra and history classes, although Berkeley High Principal Frank Lynch cautioned Thursday the results from statewide standardized tests taken in the spring will provide a more objective measure of changes in students’ academic performance.

Rebound supporters also argued Wednesday that the program had a dramatic impact on student attendance. Whereas the 30 Rebound students accumulated 259 absences in the math class during the first half of the first semester, they accumulated only 121 absences in the class during the first half of the second semester. In the control group, meanwhile, 268 math absences in the first half of the first semester grew to 464 absences in the first half of the second semester.

Rebound student Elizabeth Feamster explained the difference to the school board. There was a large group of students of color who “messed up the first semester and decided to just give up,” she said.

“It’s hard to be in a big class...where you don’t know what to do and you’re scared to ask because you feel like you’re the dumb one,” Feamster said.

“Once you fall short on your grades, you’re in the lost land of no support at Berkeley High school,” agreed Ryan Collins-Lee, a Berkeley High freshman who didn’t join Rebound and barely managed to pass his classes.

Despite graduating Willard Middle School with a 3.7 GPA, Collins-Lee said, he nearly didn’t make it to his sophomore year at Berkeley High.

“No one seems to care, except for a very few teachers, and my parents and my friends, who give me the power to keep going,” Collins-Lee said.

Given the universal acknowledgment of the seriousness of the achievement gap problem at Berkeley High, PCAD Steering Committee member Debrah Watson said she was “at a loss” to understand why school board members and other school administrators haven’t paid closer attention to Rebound’s successes, or laid out plans for emulating those successes in the larger Berkeley High community.

“By not doing anything, they have shown that they are not concerned about the community or the students,” Watson said.

In a comment that brought applauding audience members to their feet Wednesday, Peralta Community College District Board member Darryl Moore said: “Instead of eliminating (Rebound), the program should be expanded.”

Lynch said Thursday that, as he understood it, there was never any intention either by the school board or PCAD to continue Rebound beyond the end of the summer. It was a pilot program to identify effective ways for addressing the achievement gap, which it did, he said.

“We learned from (Rebound), and we will do something, but we can’t replicate what’s been going on,” Lynch said.

With five teachers and one coordinator working with just 50 students, the Rebound program provided a level of support to students and their parents that simply isn’t feasible in the larger school environment, where teachers have an average of 150 to 180 students passing through their classroom each day, Lynch said.

Rebound supporters are justly proud of the record for getting parents involved in the academic life of their students through weekly meetings and phone calls, Lynch said. But the sheer numbers make this strategy unworkable for other Berkeley High teachers, he said.

The school does plan to follow Rebound’s lead next year, Lynch said, by dividing incoming freshman into different core groups based on their academic support needs and then connecting them with backup programs, counseling and after school services.

“The only thing that we can’t duplicate is the 12-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio,” Lynch said. “That’s totally impossible to do, unless you’re a school district rolling in dollars.”

It’s not ideal, Lynch said. It just the way it is.

“As long as you have students in classes with 30-to-1 ratios as opposed to 12-1 (some students) are going to feel like people don’t care,” Lynch said. “And that is really unfortunate.”

Still, PCAD members and their supporters vowed to continue fighting Wednesday until the district institutes reforms that truly impact the achievement gap.

“PCAD is not going to stop until those kids have the same opportunities” as other Berkeley High students, PCAD Steering Committee member Michael Miller told the school board.

The NAACP’s Papillon said the time has come for Berkeley’s African American community to come together in a “town hall” meeting to bring more pressure to bear on the school board.

“It is abundantly clear that this school district will not respond to the concerns that we have until we stand before you at the size of a gorilla,” Papillon said Wednesday.

The best junior tennis players in northern California are squaring off this week at the Berkeley Tennis Club, trying to add on points to qualify for the junior national tournament in August.

Starting Monday, 68 boys and 37 girls opened the United States Tennis Association NorCal 18-and-under Sectionals Tournament. By Saturday, each bracket will be pared down to two competitors in the finals.

Tournament director Todd Mitchell, who is the Director of Tennis and head pro at the Berkeley Tennis Club, said this year’s draws are smaller than usual.

“Some kids have already signed with colleges, so they don’t want to play,” Mitchell said. “But it’s just a fact that the numbers particpating at this age are down across the board.”

But for the ones who are playing, the sectionals are a good chance to up their national standing. Since the tournament is only open to the finalists from smaller events, the point values are doubled, making this an opportunity to jump up in the rankings.

In addition, this is the last tournament before the seeding for the national finals is selected. So a big upset or a surprise loss could have a sudden impact that can’t be fixed. The boys’ national tournament will be held in Kalamazoo, Mich., with the girls’ in San Jose, both on August 6-13. Mitchell said he expects about five boys and five girls from the NorCal region to be selected for the nationals.

With the cream of the crop all in one tournament, the competition is very tough. Complicating matters is that most of the competitors know each other, having come up in the same system for many years.

“By the time they get here, they usually know each other pretty well,” Mitchell said. “That can be good, but it can also make things harder.

The doubles finals will be held at approximately 2:30 p.m. today, depending on singles results. The singles finals will be on Saturday, 10 a.m. for the girls, 11:30 a.m for the boys.

Residents of the University Avenue Co-op Homes want to take advantage of a rare opportunity to buy their affordable housing development and have asked the City Council to fund a study of the proposed purchase.

Because of the tenant-co-op structure of the development, the 47-unit property on Addison Street, has been managed and maintained by the tenants since the complex first opened. The co-op is now seeking to purchase the property from Capitol Housing Partners, the for-profit East Coast real estate company that owns the apartments.

The city owns the land the apartments are built on and currently leases it to CHA for $1 a year.

Housing officials say no purchase price has been discussed. Co-op tenants would likely secure low-interest federal, state and city loans to buy the property, according to Councilmember Dona Spring, who represents District 7 where the apartments are located.

CHA’s contract with the Housing and Urban Development Department expires on Jan. 3 and the residents are concerned the housing will revert to market rates and that the development will lose its project-based Section 8 status, which provides rental subsidies for qualified residents.

The co-op’s board of directors has carried out the responsibilities of property owners since the project first opened in the mid 1980s. The tenants have balanced the project’s budget and have been responsible for all the repair work performed on the property. The board of directors even instigated a $750,000 lawsuit against the development’s contractor for shoddy work in 1991.

Dan Sawislak, a project manager for the nonprofit developer Resources for Community Development, said the co-op’s tenant control has encouraged many of the residents to get involved with the development’s upkeep and management.

Resident Elsie Blunt, 74, who is raising her 13-year-old great-grandson in the complex said the tenants have created a pleasant atmosphere.

“This place is kept up very nice, it’s quiet, the people are friendly and there isn’t any drug problems here,” Blunt said. “I’ve lived in Berkeley since 1947 and if we lose this place, I won’t be able to afford another.”

Sawislak said the co-op’s opportunity to purchase the property is rare. The tenant-purchase option was written into the development’s contract in the early 1980s when co-ops were popular structures for affordable housing projects.

Ellen Rodin, an attorney and long-time resident of the co-op, said the project was structured by Irv Routenberg, who was a project manager for University Avenue Housing, Inc., which developed the property.

“What we have here is a very unique situation because of the way Irv organized this project,” she said. “The management lives on site and because of it you get a much better place. People who visit the apartments never believe it’s low-income housing.”

The study the tenants are requesting from the city would examine a variety of purchase scenarios, said Interim Housing Director Stephen Barton.

“We’ll have to examine when the best time to purchase the building would be, whether it’s now or five years down the road. We also need an estimate of value and we have to find out just what the nature of the private investors ownership is. Right now that’s still unclear,” Barton said.

He added the study would likely cost $2,000 to $4,000.

Spring has been supportive of the co-op purchasing the apartments and put the tenants’ request for funding the study in the biennial budget, which is scheduled to be adopted next Tuesday. “This would be a great thing for the tenants and it would guarantee the project would remain affordable in perpetuity.”

Spring said she would like to see a county bond measure go before the voters that would create a pool of money for assisting low-income tenants who want to purchase the affordable housing complexes they live in, as they came up for sale.

The American Chemistry Council, an organization representing the U.S. chemical industry, tested the soil at the Cedar and Rose Park playground in north Berkeley Thursday, to determine whether the site is contaminated with arsenic.

The sampling plan of the laboratory commissioned by ACC to do the analysis indicates that the Berkeley park is one of only five playgrounds throughout the country to be tested. The ACC was not available for comment.

City officials say the testing may be related to the nationwide controversy surrounding the safety of wooden play structures treated with a preservative made of chromium, copper and arsenic (CCA). In Berkeley, at least four parks, including Cedar and Rose present risks of arsenic poisoning.

“They clearly decided to do it because there was all this brouhaha,” said Nabil Al-Hadithy, manager of the Toxics Management Division.

The brouhaha started last March when three parks were closed in Miami because arsenic leaching from CCA-treated wooden play structures was found in the soil. Florida citizens’ concern quickly grew into a national worry. And in May, the Environmental Working group and the Healthy Building Network asked the government to ban the use of CCA-treated wood in playgrounds.

According to the study the two groups made public in Berkeley that same month, a 5-year-old child exposed to that kind of equipment for five hours a day, would reach his or her lifetime acceptable load of arsenic in fewer than 14 days. The health risks of such exposure include lung, bladder, and skin cancer.

The EWG/HBN report brought to light the negligence of the city in meeting the codes adopted in 1987 by the California Department of Health Services. According to these codes the arsenic-treated play structures have to be coated with sealant every two years, but Berkeley did it for a couple of years only.

After the study was made public, Parks and Waterfront Department Director Lisa Caronna, immediately addressed the issue. She had the hazardous structures coated and plans to replace them within five years. However, officials fear that contaminants have leached into the soil during the years the structures were not protected.

“The concern is the dusting and the fact that with the run off the soil is contaminated too, because there was a long period of time when it wasn’t coated and the sealant was lost,” said L.A. Wood, vice chair of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, who attended Thursday’s sample collection.

The results of the American Chemistry Council’s soil analysis should be available within two and one-half weeks. But to the city, the ACC’s findings make little difference. Caronna said she was pleased that the ACC, unlike other organizations in the past, informed the city of the testing and asked officials to supervise the sample collection. But she added that it will not influence city policies – the Parks Department will soon do an independent and thorough soil analysis.

“From our perspective, we want to know if there is any other site that presents a danger,” she said.

The testing should be done in the next couple of months if the City Council approves the recommendation that the Community Environmental Advisory Commission will present to it July 17.

Among other things, the commission requests the city replace all CCA-treated structures, test all playgrounds with treated wood, and address the problem of Berkeley’s non city-owned playgrounds, including those belonging to the school district, private schools and day care centers.

SANTA CLARA — Forty teachers in one of the nation’s tightest housing markets won coveted spots Thursday in inexpensive apartments being built on school district property as part of a program believed to be the first of its kind anywhere.

About 85 Santa Clara teachers entered the lottery for the new apartments in “Casa del Maestro” – Home of the Teacher. It is expected to open next spring with rents about one-half the market rate.

School district officials hope it helps them retain new teachers, who are increasingly fleeing Silicon Valley’s exorbitant cost of living after a few years.

A local disc jockey plucked the lucky teachers’ names from a plastic bin in a stuffy room at an elementary school, where the apartments are being built on the edge of a soccer field. Besides the 40 winners, 20 teachers were placed on a waiting list.

Most of the winners were not at the ceremony because this is the break between the regular school year and summer school. But those attending were delighted when their names were called, while their fellow teachers applauded.

Stack, 24, moved to Santa Clara from Missoula, Mont., last week and has been sleeping on a friend’s couch. Now he has his eye on a 1,200-square foot, two-bedroom apartment with a den, deck, washer and dryer that will cost around $1,200 a month.

“Now I can make a commitment to the district and these kids,” he said. When asked what he would have done if he hadn’t won the lottery, he said: “Struggle like the rest of them. Try as hard as I can to get by, and if it doesn’t work, I’d probably leave like the rest of them.”

The downturn in the technology economy has softened the real estate market in Santa Clara County somewhat, but the median price of a single-family home in May still was $561,350, according to the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors. That’s up from $525,000 last year.

Apartment rents in the county have dropped as much as 20 percent from their peak prices last fall, said Alan Pontius, senior vice president at Marcus & Millichap, a real estate investment company.

But that follows a 30 percent rise at the height of the Internet boom, and the market remains relatively tight, he said.

That situation is becoming a crisis for schools.

In the Santa Clara Unified School District, which has about 850 teachers and 15,000 students, teachers earn between $41,000 and $75,000 a year. Those who leave their jobs very often cite the area’s cost of living as the reason, Superintendent Paul Perotti said.

To fight the problem, the district tapped funds left over from the sale of schools that closed long ago. The $6 million Casa del Maestro is being built at a school the district owns but leases to a private school.

A nonprofit organization set up by the district is overseeing the project, and a private company will manage the apartments – so school administrators can stay out of the landlord business.

The lottery for Casa del Maestro was limited to teachers with less than three years of experience in the district, but they will be able to stay as long as they remain teachers at a Santa Clara public school. Spouses are welcome, of course, as long as the couple’s combined income does not exceed $136,000.

While other districts have helped subsidize homes for teachers, no other public school system has built teacher housing on its property, according to Lawrence D. Carr, director of education for the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, which helped plan the project.

American Federation of Teachers spokeswoman Janet Bass also said she had not heard of another program like this one. A similar project proposed at a San Francisco school last year never materialized.

Before the lottery began, special-education teacher Christine Williams said an apartment in Casa del Maestro would help her save for her daughter’s college education. For now, they live with two other teachers in a four-bedroom apartment in Los Gatos that rents for a total $2,200 a month, but they’re forced to move because one roommate is leaving the area.

“You’d think a teacher could be able to find a house — not Beverly Hills, of course,” Williams said with a laugh. “Prices haven’t come down as much as I thought they would.”

As the winning names were announced, Williams sat by herself on a metal folding chair, looking anxious. But her name was never called, and she left out a back door without saying a word.

SACRAMENTO — Facing a bare-bones budget, California’s high-speed rail planners are trying to scrape together enough money to keep the project limping along over the next 12 months.

The Legislature’s budget-writing committee approved only $1 million for the project in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

That’s enough to cover staff costs but it leaves little or nothing to continue the 2 years of environmental studies needed before the state can begin building the 700-mile, $26 billion system.

“It’s one of those years you limp along but you’ve got to run faster to catch up,” said Medhi Morshed, executive director of the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority, the nine-member board that’s overseeing the project.

The proposed system would link Sacramento, the San Francisco area, Los Angeles and San Diego with trains that could reach speeds of more than 200 mph.

Lawmakers put $5 million in the current state budget to begin the environmental reviews, and the authority hired teams of engineering and environmental firms to do the work.

The authority asked for $14 million in the next budget to continue those studies.

But warnings of looming deficits put the Legislature’s budget writers in a cost-cutting mood.

“It wasn’t just us. ... It’s regrettable but I don’t think it’s insurmountable. I do think we can make progress.”

Morshed said the authority should be able to augment its budget by getting about $500,000 in voter-approved bond money from the state Transportation Commission.

That money is already earmarked for environmental reviews of a high-speed train line between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, according to Morshed.

The authority could also do some more environmental work on a potential coastal route between San Diego and Los Angeles by teaming up with the state Department of Transportation, Morshed said.

The department is planning to expand conventional rail passenger service between the two cities and needs environmental reviews too.

“If we can come to terms with what they need, we can continue working on that corridor,” Morshed said.

The authority also plans to generate more planning money by leaving vacant two staff positions, and it hopes to get as

much as $8 million from the

federal government.

Morshed said he didn’t know what the prospects were for getting federal assistance.

“The (federal) budget crunch time has not arrived so I don’t know if anyone’s focused on it,” he said.

Assemblyman Dean Florez, D-Shafter, said California could get $15 million or $16 million in federal support over a two- or three-year period.

He also said there might be discretionary funding in the state Department of Transportation budget that the authority could tap.

State Sen. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein was working on lining up federal support for the project. Costa said he also plans to try to get the backing of U.S. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, a former California congressman.

Graveline said some counties “that recognize the imperative of having high-speed rail” might be willing to chip in planning funds if the state repaid them.

“That’s been a common practice with highway projects,” he said. “We’re just getting creative about how we can continue to operate.”

Veteran bluesman John Lee Hooker, whose foot stompin’ and gravelly voice electrified audiences and inspired several generations of musicians, died Thursday at his Los Altos home. He was 83.

He died at in his sleep at his home, said Hooker’s agent Mike Kappus.

Hooker died of natural causes with friends and family near, said his manager Rick Bates.

During a more than six-decade-long music career, the veteran blues singer from the Mississippi Delta estimated he recorded more than 100 albums. Some of his better-known songs include “Boogie Chillen,” “Boom Boom” and “I’m In The Mood.”

Throughout it all, Hooker’s music remained unchanged. His rich and sonorous voice, full of ancient hurt, and his brooding and savage style remained hypnotic but unpredictable. To the strains of his own guitar, he sang of loneliness and confusion. Neither polished nor urbane, his music was raw, primal emotion.

His one-chord boogie compositions and rhythmic guitar work were a distinctive sound that influenced rock ’n’ rollers as well as rhythm and blues musicians.

In 1991, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Last year at the Grammys, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Among those whose music drew heavily on Hooker’s style are Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and ZZ Top. In 1961, the then-unknown Rolling Stones opened for him on a European tour; he also shared a bill that year with Bob Dylan at a club in New York City.

Even in the ’90s, when his fame was sealed and he was widely recognized as one of the grandfathers of pop music, Hooker remained a little in awe of his own success, telling The Times of London, “People say I’m a genius but I don’t know about that.”

Like many postwar bluesmen, Hooker got cheated by one fly-by-night record producer after another, who demanded exclusivity or didn’t pay. Hooker fought back by recording with rival producers under a slew of different names: Texas Slim, John Lee Booker, John Lee Cocker, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and the Boogie Man, among others.

Hooker’s popularity grew steadily as he rode the wave of rock in the ’50s into the folk boom of the ’60s. In 1980, he played a street musician in “The Blues Brothers” movie. In 1985, his songs were used in Steven Spielberg’s film, “The Color Purple.”

Hooker hit it big again in 1990 with his album “The Healer,” featuring duets with Carlos Santana, Raitt and Robert Cray. It sold 1.5 million copies and won him his first Grammy Award, for a duet with Raitt on “I’m in the Mood.”

Several more albums followed, including one recorded to celebrate his 75th birthday, titled “Chill Out.”

In his later years, Hooker laid back and enjoyed his success. He recorded only occasionally; he posed for blue jeans and hard liquor ads.

Born in Clarksdale, Miss., in 1917, Hooker was one of 11 children born to a Baptist minister and sharecropper who discouraged his son’s musical bent.

His stepfather taught him to play guitar. By the time Hooker was a teenager, he was performing at local fish fries, dances and other occasions.

Hooker hit the road to perform by the age of 14. He worked odd jobs by day and played small bars at night in Memphis, then Cincinnati and finally Detroit in 1943.

“I don’t know what a genius is,” he told the London newspaper. “I know there ain’t no one ever sound like me, except maybe my stepfather. You hear all the kids trying to play like B.B. (King), and they ain’t going to because, ooh, he’s such a fine player and a very great man. But you never hear them even try and sound like John Lee Hooker.”

“All these years, I ain’t done nothin’ different,” he added. “I been doing the same things as in my younger days, when I was coming up, and now here I am, an old man, up there in the charts. And I say, well, what happened? Have they just thought up the real John Lee Hooker, is that it? And I think, well, I won’t tell nobody else! I can’t help but wonder what happened.”

LOS ANGELES — With “Bulworth” actor and political wannabe Warren Beatty as its headliner, a group of liberal Democrats is declaring war on Republicans this weekend, and possibly some Democrats as well.

The organization wants Democrats to abandon all efforts at bipartisanship and do battle with the GOP over the Bush administration’s agenda. The new Southern California Americans for Democratic Action goes so far as to say it will work to oust Democrats from office who deviate from the liberal party line.

“I think they’ve been handling things naively. I think bipartisanship is a myth,” Lila Garrett, the group’s president, said of congressional Democrats. “We’re really in danger of losing all of the social gains we’ve made.”

Garrett hopes to rally support at an all-day conference on Sunday. Specifically, she wants attendees to lobby members of Congress to support the group’s positions on such things as universal health care, public education and a limited defense budget, with no room for compromise.

For those who don’t pass the group’s litmus tests, Garrett wants funds raised in the coming months to get them booted from office during primaries. In the Senate, for example, there only 38 “real Democrats,” she said.

Democrats enjoy a 50-49 advantage in the Senate with one independent. The House is 222-210 in favor of Republicans, with independents holding two seats and one seat vacant.

Bipartisanship and compromise have become the Washington buzzwords of the day in the wake of November’s tight elections and President Bush’s controversial electoral win over Al Gore.

Among the speakers are Beatty – whose flirtation with a bid for president gained momentum at a SCADA event in 1999, film director Rob Reiner, environmentalist and actor Ed Begley Jr. and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo. Liberal California lawmakers, including Rep. Maxine Waters and Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, also are scheduled to speak.

Democratic and Republican analysts alike describe the group’s approach as unrealistic and dispute Garrett’s claims that bipartisanship can’t work. Voters have no interest in political posturing, analysts say, they simply want lawmakers to get things done.

“I think it’s a classic case of people who misunderstand the political arena. It’s about compromise. It’s about finding the middles – it’s rarely about the extremes,” said Jim Duffy, a Democratic consultant in Washington. “Those who tend to say it’s my way or the highway don’t tend to be very effective in politics.”

Duffy also predicted that any efforts to campaign against Democrats who fail the group’s litmus tests may backfire. Moderate Democrats tend to hail from swing states anyway, he said, where voters might be inclined to support a Democrat who draws the ire of a left-wing, Hollywood group.

Nonetheless, Duffy said he welcomes input from any political group.

“I’m always encouraged when people want to get involved and be involved in the political dialogue,” he said.

Rudy Fernandez, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, described the group’s actions as “a shame.”

“It send a negative tone,” he said. “This group is definitely politicizing issues that are important to all Americans, and we should be working together.”

Fernandez said Congress and Bush have shown that bipartisanship works during the past few months as they’ve worked together on tax and education bills.

Even the speakers who agreed to attend Sunday’s event are quick to point out they don’t follow the strict ideological approach of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action.

Reiner, who is well known as both an activist and fund-raiser, plans to continue supporting candidates based on their support for early childhood education and generally not get involved in primaries, his spokesman said.

Both Reiner and Begley, the “St. Elsewhere” actor and staunch environmentalist, also said they are comfortable crossing party lines to work with or support people who share their beliefs

“I think Rob is very pragmatic in the policies that he advocates for and the politics it takes to get things done in Washington,” Reiner’s spokesman, Chad Griffin said.

Gephardt’s spokeswoman, Kori Bernards, said the Missouri congressman planned to talk in broad terms about the direction of the Democratic party.

“We’re just speaking, we’re not endorsing their views on not being bipartisan,” she said. “Certainly the leader has been someone who has worked to bring bipartisanship to the House.”

RICHMOND — A home health care nurse whose three pit bulls chewed off a 10-year-old boy’s face and ears was arraigned Thursday on two misdemeanor charges for allegedly concealing the dogs after the attack.

Benjamin Moore, 27, was charged in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Richmond and was held on $50,000 bail. He pleaded innocent to the charges.

Prosecutors had hoped to charge Moore with felony mayhem and failing to exercise care with dogs trained to fight, attack or kill, but said their investigation did not support those charges.

Moore’s girlfriend, Jacinda Knight, 33, was released without charges.

Moore’s lawyer, public defender Michael Friedman, asked Commissioner Stephen Houghton to release Moore without bail, but Houghton said he thought Moore should stay in jail because he did not call 911 after the attack.

“The court is concerned with the alleged disregard for the victim in this case,” Houghton said. He set a pretrial hearing for July 13. Moore said he fled with his dogs Monday evening because he thought the boy was dead. Now two of the dogs are still missing, and Shawn Jones is in critical condition.

He spent most of Monday night in surgery, but his ears could not be reattached, said Dr. James Betts, chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

If he survives, the boy faces years of plastic surgery and may never fully recover, the doctor said.

He’s also suffering through painful rabies shots because the dogs haven’t been tested. On Thursday, Shawn’s blood pressure dropped precipitously but doctors did stabilize him, said Carol Hyman, a spokeswoman for Children’s Hospital Oakland.

Animal control officials said Thursday they found one dog in an unincorporated part of Contra Costa County near Richmond. Police Sgt. Enos Johnson said late in the day that the dog has been identified as one of the three dogs involved in the attack.

Moore insists the dogs were current with their vaccinations, have no history of violence and do not pose a threat now that they’ve been separated. But county officials say they have no records proving the dogs have been vaccinated.

“I’d provide as much money as I could to help. I feel real sorry for the family and the boy,” he said.

But Darryl Cyrus, Shawn’s stepfather, only wants to find the dogs.

“I raised pit bulls, and I know when you raise them, you love them,” he said. “I know his heart wouldn’t allow him to just turn them loose. Someone’s got those dogs.”

The city of Richmond is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the dogs, which would have to be destroyed to be tested for rabies.

A trust fund for Shawn’s medical treatment also has been set up at the Mechanics Bank in Richmond.

“I’m a God-fearing man. I’m not going to be angry at him,” Cyrus added. “I want to plead with him. Turn those dogs in and let them be destroyed. If you have kids, your kids could be next.”

LOS ANGELES — Gov. Gray Davis does not have blanket powers to deny parole to murderers, a judge ruled Thursday in ordering the release of convicted killer Robert Rosenkrantz.

Rosenkrantz, who killed a boyhood friend in Calabasas 16 years ago for revealing Rosenkrantz’s homosexuality, has become the rallying point against Davis’ reluctance to grant parole to murderers.

“There is a total absence of any evidence in the record supporting the governor’s opinion that (Rosenkrantz) represents a ‘continued threat to the public,’ ” Superior Court Judge Paul Gutman wrote.

“While the governor is entitled to express his opinion, the opinion itself must be factually supported and it is not.”

The decision “reverses a policy that says even people who have a chance to be redeemed are having that chance taken away,” said Alan Schlosser, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California chapter.

“This is a strong testament showing that no one, even the governor, is above the law ... he can’t act cavalierly and capriciously,” Schlosser said.

The state will file an appeal to keep Rosenkrantz in prison “as soon as possible,” said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Davis’s decision was unconstitutional, Gutman wrote, because he failed to apply the standards used by the Parole Board for inmate release.

The governor says he does not employ a no-parole policy, but Gutman found that his actions and public statements show he denies parole to murderers “regardless of any extenuating circumstances.”

Of the 48 convicted murderers granted parole by the Board of Prison Terms since Davis took office in 1999, the governor has rejected all but one of them. Rose Ann Parker, who shot her abusive boyfriend in 1986 after he threatened to kill her and her son, was released in December.

Barry Goode, Davis’ legal affairs secretary, reiterated the governor’s contention that he does not arbitrarily rule against granting murderers parole.

“Gov. Davis studied Mr. Rosenkrantz’s case carefully before deciding that he is not suitable for parole at this time,” Goode said in a statement Thursday.

“Gov. Davis gives each case careful scrutiny. He determines each on its own merits and will continue to do so.”

Rosenkrantz, 33, was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison, where he became a model prisoner and a computer expert. But the Board of Prison Terms’ decision to release him sparked immediate controversy — as did Davis’ decision to overturn it.

Davis said in his October decision to block the release that Rosenkrantz was fortunate not to have been convicted of first-degree murder, a verdict he said would have been supported by the facts.

During court hearings before Gutman, Deputy Attorney General Robert Wilson argued that Davis does not arbitrarily deny parole to all murderers. His denial in Rosenkrantz’s case was made because of the vicious nature of the killing, Wilson said.

Rosenkrantz had just graduated from high school when he shot and killed 17-year-old Steven Redman with an Uzi semiautomatic weapon on June 28, 1985. Days earlier, Redman had told Rosenkrantz’s father that Rosenkrantz was gay.

A jury convicted Rosenkrantz of second-degree murder; he was sentenced to 17 years to life in prison.

Rosenkrantz’s attorney Donald Specter said Rosenkrantz and his family were thrilled.

“They’re all extremely happy and relieved and thankful for the courage that the judge showed to make a ruling such as the one he did,” Specter said. “They’re looking forward very much to having Robert Rosenkrantz released.”

No one wants to stand by and watch their tomato plants wilt away to nothing in dry weather. Then again, who wants to run their well dry or waste water? The challenge is to keep plants happy and, at the same time, conserve water.

Water conservation begins with making sure that every raindrop gets into the soil instead of running elsewhere. Hillside gardens catch rain best if they are terraced or have low ridges built perpendicular to the slope. On flat ground, soil formed into slightly raised basins around individual plants ensures that water runs right to those

plants’ roots.

Bare soils form surface crusts that shed rainfall almost like concrete. Encourage percolation by loosening the surface with a hoe or, even better, covering the surface with an organic mulch like straw, leaves, or compost. Peat moss is not a good choice because, although very absorbent when moistened, it sheds water when dry.

Once water is in the soil, keep it there for plants as long as possible. Organic mulch also conserves water by preventing evaporation from the soil surface.

Despite efforts to catch and hold rainwater, supplemental watering might be needed. If you use a sprinkler, apply a lot of water infrequently – a 1-inch depth once a week suits most plants. The best time to sprinkle is midmorning so that leaves dry off quickly enough to avoid diseases, yet temperatures are not yet warm enough to cause excessive evaporation.

The idea behind a second watering method – drip irrigation – is to apply water frequently, but only a little each time. Drip irrigation is applied through inexpensive tubes and emitters, and has the advantages of using less water than sprinkling, pinpointing water just where it is needed, and being easily automated.

You also can conserve water by only putting it where and when it is needed. For instance, many types of lawngrass go dormant in dry weather, but will green up again once rainfall returns. Leafy vegetables, on the other hand, need a steady supply of water to remain succulent and flavorful. Cucumber, squash, and corn plants need plenty of water just as their edible portions start growing.

Q: I have two questions. I have cracks in my concrete basement floor from which I believe radon gas is creeping in.

What is the best way to seal those cracks? How can I decide what type of heavy-duty snow shovel to buy? I want one that doesn’t get its edges rolled up by snow and ice. What should I expect to pay?

A: Before you do anything about that cracked floor, test for radon first. Better yet, have a professional make the test for you.

Another reason for contacting a professional: You might need to install a system to exhaust the vapors if the radon is present in a dangerous concentration. The concentration of radon should be checked both before and after the concrete is sealed. Sealing the cracks in the floor of your basement might be all that you need to do.

Then again, maybe more work will be needed.

Perhaps you will not have to install the exhaust system we mentioned. In any event, use a polyurethane concrete caulk.

Remember: You are dealing with simple, old-fashioned gas vapors.

There doesn’t seem to be much pressure associated with radon vapors, so most any concrete caulk will do. We have recommended the type that bonds the best and that holds up the longest.

As to snow shovels, we suggest that you contact someone at your local tool rental store for unbiased advice. The brand that they buy will be the one that probably holds up the best and will more than likely have been purchased locally, and therefore, should be readily available to you as well.

Q: Chris asks: The paint on my outside wall is peeling. What is the best way to remove it before I put on a new coat of paint?

A: Paint removal by a do-it-yourselfer is most easily accomplished with a pressure washer. Although pressure washers are available for rent, if you are a homeowner, we suggest you consider purchasing one. Its uses around the house are endless.

Be careful. If you aren’t, you can damage the siding below. Pressure washing takes patience, attention to the matter at hand and a careful touch. Once you have finished pressure washing, you might want to touch things up with a paint scraper.

Also, sand those areas where the pressure washer lifted the wood grain. Finally, use sandpaper to feather in all the edges between the remaining paint and any bare wood. Next, apply a coat of high quality, oil-base primer and then your finish coat. We suggest high-quality acrylic latex.

WASHINGTON — Americans increasingly see an economic divide between the haves and have-nots, according to a new poll that also finds a majority of people dissatisfied with the country’s direction.

The poll, released Thursday, indicated the economic boom of the 1990s helped the upper middle-class and wealthy, but had little impact on the outlook or financial condition of those who make less money.

“The boom has passed these people by,” said pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Overall satisfaction with the country’s direction has fallen in the past six months, with 43 percent now saying they’re satisfied and 52 percent saying they’re dissatisfied. That dropoff from a 55-41 positive split in January was led by a decline among women and minorities.

The number of people who think the country is divided between those who have enough and those who don’t has grown steadily and now is at 44 percent — up from 26 percent in 1988.

Just over four in 10 in the new poll thought President Bush was mostly concerned with helping those who have enough, while one in 20 said he was interested in helping those who don’t. Four in 10 said he was treating both groups about the same.

The president has pitched his recently passed tax cut as a way to help all Americans. Just over a third said they were looking forward to getting their income tax rebates, while almost six in 10 said they hadn’t thought about it.

Less than half, 44 percent, now say they are in good or excellent financial shape personally, a drop of 8 percentage points from a year ago.

“The economic gains the middle class have made seem to be very much threatened by the credit crunch and by energy costs,” said Kohut.

The people who say they have more debt than they can afford to owe have grown from a fifth of Americans in 1992 to almost three in 10 in 2001. More than a third of those who have family incomes of less than $50,000 said they have credit card and loan debts that are more than they can afford.

A fourth of people in the survey said not having enough money to make ends meet was the biggest problem facing them and their families. High prices were right behind that. The poll of 1,200 people was taken last Wednesday through Sunday and had an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Those at the lower end of the economy saw few signs of economic progress.

“The survey gives a lot of evidence that poor people remain about as poor as they were in the early 1990s,” Kohut said.

The numbers who said they didn’t have enough money for food, clothes and health care were all up slightly from other polls taken over the past two decades.

Middle-income and wealthy people said it is now easier for them to afford housing, appliances and vacations.

Some other findings from the poll:

—Women were more concerned about rising prices than men.

—Four in 10 Americans now say there are plenty of jobs available, up from one in 10 who felt that way eight years ago. Those from wealthy households were twice as likely to feel that way as those with low incomes.

—Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities were more likely than whites to struggle with economic issues, even when compared with whites in the same economic ranges.

Despite stark differences in perceptions between those with money and those without, the public still had a generally upbeat view of the economy.

“The only measure in this poll that is less positive overall is the question of how much debt do you have,” said Kohut. “It’s not high-income people, but lower-income and middle-income people — that’s where the credit crunch comes in.”

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On the Net: Pew Research Center Web site — http://www.people-press.org

Imports, hurt by sagging demand because of the weak U.S. economy, fell more than exports did in April, narrowing the trade gap.

The two-month drop in exports reflected the impact of sluggish demand overseas.

“This is really a sign of weakness all around,” said Paul Kasriel, chief economist at the Northern Trust Co.

On Wall Street, growing anticipation that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates for a sixth time this year to revive the U.S. economy helped lift stocks higher.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 68.10 at 10,715.43.

In April, imports of goods and services declined by 2.2 percent to $119.1 billion, while exports dipped by 2 percent to $86.9 billion.

“We have a lackluster American consumer and slowing growth abroad,” said economist Clifford Waldman of Waldman Associates.

Through the first four months of this year, the deficit swelled to $127.2 billion, compared with $116.8 billion during the same period last year.

For all of last year, the deficit mushroomed to a record $375.7 billion, according to annual revisions also released Thursday. The government had previously reported a trade shortfall of $368.9 billion for all of 2000.

America’s continuing trade deficits represent a political challenge for President Bush as he tries to overcome congressional resistance to give him unfettered authority to negotiate new regional and international trade pacts.

Bush administration officials pressed their case for that on Capitol Hill on Thursday, a day after Bush criticized opponents who want to add labor and environmental conditions to his “fast track” trade authority.

Fast-track authority would allow Bush to strike a new free-trade agreement with all the democratic nations in the Western Hemisphere, as well as open a new round of World Trade Organization talks on lowering trade barriers.

The Bush administration argues that American companies have no choice but to compete in the global economy, but critics contend that lower trade barriers subject American workers to unfair competition from low-wage countries with lax environmental standards.

The monthly trade report also showed that the United States’ politically sensitive deficit with China jumped by 9.7 percent in April to $6.3 billion. The U.S.’ deficit with Japan widened by 3.1 percent to $6.4 billion, as U.S. exports to the country hit their lowest point in a year.

Exports of U.S.-made capital goods, such as airplanes and semiconductors, fell to $27.9 billion in April, the lowest level since March 2000, adding to the woes of domestic manufacturers, who have been hardest hit by the domestic economic slowdown.

At the same time, imports of capital goods declined to $26 billion, the lowest level since November 1999, as U.S. businesses, struggling with the slowdown, cut back on their purchases, economists said.

In a bright spot for U.S. companies, sales of U.S.-made consumer goods, such as artwork, books and furniture, to other countries rose to a record $7.9 billion in April.

A broader measure of cross-border activity, the “current account,” narrowed in the first three months of this year to $109.6 billion from an imbalance of $116.3 billion in the fourth quarter.

The current account includes not only goods and services but also investment flows between countries and unilateral transfers, including U.S. foreign aid payments.

In a third report, the Labor Department said the number of Americans filing new claims for state unemployment insurance fell sharply by 34,000 to 400,000 last week. Even with the unexpected drop, claims are still at a level suggesting that the weak U.S. economy has sapped demand for workers.

WASHINGTON — A gene mutation that arose thousands of years ago now protects hundreds of millions of people from severe malaria, the mosquito-borne disease that is the world’s deadliest infection.

Researchers report Friday in the journal Science that they have traced the natural evolution in Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean area of the mutation that gives some protection from malaria’s most serious effects.

Malaria annually infects about 500 million people and kills more than 2 million, making it globally a more deadly infection than HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis. Without the mutation, it could be even worse.

“This is a striking example of how infectious disease can shape the path of human evolution” and how organisms battle for survival on a molecular level, said Sarah A. Tishkoff of the University of Maryland.

Tishkoff is first author of the study with 17 co-authors from eight countries.

The researchers traced the development of a malaria resistant gene that they believe first appeared in humans thousands of years ago in Africa and later among people in the lands of the Mediterranean and parts of Asia.

Tishkoff said the mutation of an X chromosome gene called G6PD evolved as a natural response to widespread infection from the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria. In its mutated form, it helps block the reproduction of the malaria parasite.

“Malaria may have been present in a mild form throughout human evolution,” said Tishkoff. Primitive hunters and gatherers wandered the land, not staying in one place long enough for malaria to take a significant toll.

That all changed, she said, with the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Forests were cleared and sunlit still waters became mosquito breeding sites. People stayed near their crops, and the first cities were born.

There also was a change in African weather, which became wetter and hotter about 12,000 years ago.

“We think a more deadly strain became prevalent and began having a major impact on humans,” said Tishkoff.

Evidence of this is indirect. Specimens from Egyptian mummies contain swollen spleens and antigens to malaria. Homer, an 8th century B.C. Greek poet, described a disease thought to have been malaria. Later, rich Romans left their city in the summer to escape a disease Tishkoff said was probably malaria.

It’s even possible, said Tishkoff, that the army of Alexander the Great spread malaria throughout the Middle East, North Africa and India in the 4th century B.C.

The mutation of G6PD provides a more direct indication of how malaria affected humans.

Since humans developed a genetic defense, said Tishkoff, it suggests that the disease was prevalent enough to exert “a strong selective force.”

She said mutations occur randomly. If some such mutation protects against a disease that is killing others, then people with that gene change have a greater chance to survive and to reproduce. Over many generations, this advantage becomes more common and widespread.

By analyzing how and where the mutations accumulated over time, Tishkoff and her colleagues determined that a G6PD mutation arose in Africa 3,800 to 11,700 years ago. The gene variant developed independently at 1,600 to 6,640 years ago around the Mediterranean, in the Middle East and in India.

The G6PD gene variant differs slightly from region to region, but Tishkoff said about 400 million people now carry the mutation.

In Africa, studies have shown the mutation lowers the risk of severe malaria by up to 58 percent.

Such protection, however, is not without risks. Some people with the mutation develop a severe anemia from infection, drugs or from eating fava beans.

A mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also is thought to have originated as a defense against malaria, but double mutations of the gene can cause a deadly disorder.

Jonathan Friedlaender, a biological anthropologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, said the study by Tishkoff and her colleagues is an “elegant” look at how disease and resistance can develop over time.

“It’s like an arms race, but nobody wins because everything is constantly changing,” he said.

Understanding how disease and resistance evolve may help scientists develop therapies, he said.

Three co-workers of Jayne Ash, a pedestrian who was killed by a cement truck at Shattuck and Hearst avenues last March, urged the council Tuesday to approve funds to implement bicycle and pedestrian safety measures.

Ash’s friends and co-workers, Melissa Ehman, Lisa Pascopella and Elizabeth Lawton, addressed the council during a public hearing on the city’s biennial budget, which is scheduled to be adopted by the council on June 26.

They asked the council to approve $200,000 over the next two years for safety measures that were approved by the council over a year ago in the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety report. The report was compiled by a six-member task force and endorsed by a host of city departments and commissions, including the Community Health Commission, Commission on Disability and the Transportation Commission.

The 119-page report calls for an action plan that includes safety education, the re-engineering of dangerous intersections, stepped up traffic enforcement and the creation of a pedestrian safety plan.

Bicycle and pedestrian activists say very few of the safety projects have been accomplished since the council approved the plan on May 9, 2000.

“While we’re urging the council to approve funding for the comprehensive safety plan, our bigger message is that the city needs to get its act together,” Ehman said Wednesday.

The three women, who work for the State Department of Health, cited traffic statistics from the report and noted that Berkeley ranks number one in the state for bicycle and pedestrian deaths and injuries.

“If this were an infectious disease it would be public health emergency,” Pascopella told the council.

Since the plan was approved only a

few of its recommendations have been implemented. The Health and Human Services Department has arranged for banners to be placed on Shattuck and University avenues, which will encourage drivers to slow down; there will be a discount coupon program that will allow pedestrians, bicyclists and people who use wheelchairs to purchase flashing safety lights, and a web site will be launched sometime this summer, according to Chandra Sivakumar, the city’s health educator.

Safe Routes to School Project Manager Sarah Syed said these projects are a drop in the bucket. “The city is notoriously unmotivated on these issues and there seems to be no comprehensive plan,” she said. “The city isn’t even going after safety grants that could help fund safety projects because they don’t have the personnel.”

Syed said an example of the city’s lack of action is the list of high-hazard intersections in the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety report. She said that despite the identification of the most dangerous intersections, nothing has been done to make them safer.

City Manager Weldon Rucker said in a June 7 interview that he is aware of the problem in addressing bicycle and pedestrian safety issues and has taken steps to correct the improve the city’s response to the problems.

Rucker said the city’s Planning and Public Works departments have been plagued with a series of personal problems that have delayed traffic safety projects. The city’s traffic engineer, Jeff Knolls, quit in December for a better-paying job after being employed by the city for eight months. Then last May, the city’s first traffic planner, Joe Kott, quit less than a month after he was hired.

Kott, who returned to his former job in Palo Alto, cited organizational problems as the reason for his departure. Knolls said his decision to leave the city was partially based on similar issues. The city’s bicycle safety officer, Rochelle Wheeler also recently quit to pursue other career options and the Health and Human Services coordinator for educational projects, Dina Quan, has just returned from a four-month maternity leave.

Rucker said he will reorganize traffic safety efforts by putting the new traffic planner and traffic engineer in the City Manger’s Office, once they are hired, so he can directly monitor their progress.

Police and California Highway Patrol records show that four pedestrians were killed in Berkeley between 1997 and 2000. During that same time, 523 pedestrians and 610 bicyclists were injured. There were no bicycle deaths during those years, according to the report.

According to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety report, University and Shattuck avenues is the most dangerous intersection in the city for both pedestrians and bicyclists. From 1994 to 1998, there were 17 pedestrian and 12 bicycle accidents at the intersection.

Other dangerous intersections include Durant and Telegraph avenues, Gilman Street and San Pablo Avenue and Ashby Avenue and Sacramento Street.

Deputy City Manager Phil Kamlarz said much of the $200,000 budgeted for bicycle and pedestrian safety programs will go to hiring a new staff person and to re-engineer the high-hazard intersections.

Ehman said she felt compelled to address the council because of Ash’s death while legally crossing Shattuck Avenue during a coffee break.

“We got involved with this because of Jane and because we cross the same streets all the time,” she said.

Relay team finishes year with third-place at national event; Guy to attend Northridge St.

The St. Mary’s boys’ relay team finished its season with a flourish last weekend, finishing third in the 4x200-meter relay with the fourth fastest time in the nation this year at the Adidas National Outdoor Championships in Raleigh, N.C.

The meet, which was delayed halfway through due to a tropical storm, brought together some of the top individuals and teams from around the country. The St. Mary’s team of Asokah Muhammed, Courtney Brown, Julian Keyes and Halihl Guy also finished fifth in the 4x100-meter relay despite the absence of Chris Dunbar, who has been hampered by a pulled hamstring for the past two months. The Panthers had the third-fastest time in the qualifying heats at 41.60 seconds, but had two botched handoffs in the final and limped home in 42.76 seconds.

Also complicating matters, Guy had run in the 400-meter hurdles race just eight minutes before the 4x100 final. Guy finished ninth in the hurdles race.

“I think Halihl might have ran out of gas for the final,” St. Mary’s head coach Jay Lawson said. “Combine that with two bad handoffs, and we just couldn’t stay with the other fastest teams.”

But the 4x200-meter relay, which the Panthers hadn’t run since the Oakland Athletic Invitational in early April, was a different story. With no qualifying heats for the event, the Panthers were fresh and ready to run. Lawson said the team set a goal of breaking the school record in the event, and they did just that, bettering the mark by more than two seconds with a blistering 1:26.0. They were beaten by Forest Brook and O.D. Wyatt, the top two finishers from the Texas state meet, in a reverse finish of the 4x100 final.

“Julian ran very well in Dunbar’s place, and we did as well as we could have,” Lawson said. “It’s a nice way to end the season.”

The Panthers planned to run the 4x400-meter relay on Saturday, but the storm pushed the event back to Sunday and the team left before the race. Only two teams stuck around long enough to compete in the race, with Camden (N.J.) winning in 3:09.91.

NOTES: St. Mary’s Guy, a senior, pulled a sudden switch in his college choice. As recently as a week ago, he was set on attending Washington State. But Cal State Northridge called and invited him to check out the campus and program, and Guy took a trip south before heading to North Carolina.

“I told him to go check it out, because he had nothing to losebut a day,” Lawson said. “He’s going to be a communications major, so being close to Los Angeles makes more sense. When they offered him a full ride (Washington State was only offering a partial scholarship), I think that sealed the deal.”

“They’re really trying to build up the men’s program down at Northridge, and Halihl can be part of that.”

We needn’t tell you that President Bush’s tax cut means a windfall for the rich and further cuts in needed public services (education, health care, etc.) for the rest of us. We dread this re-direction of money so badly needed for the public good. And we deeply resent Bush’s cynical assumption that our acquiescence can be bought with a few hundred dollars.

Yes, there are many ways we could spend our tax refund when the check arrives. Fortunately for the two of us, at the moment there is no way that we really MUST spend it.

Therefore we decided to sign over our refund to one of the public or private services that needs and deserves our support. But how could we name them all, let alone choose one? After endless discussion, we decided on the Berkeley Public Library Foundation.

If this idea makes sense for you, we suggest you choose a favorite cause – education, the arts, the environment, peace, health, human rights, the needy and oppressed here and abroad – the list goes on and on. Sign over your refund check to a group that furthers your chosen cause. (Feeling mischievous? Choose one that Bush supporters HATE.) Before sending it, make a photo-copy for your representative in Congress, perhaps adding a word or two about what this gesture means to you. Contact friends and colleagues who might want to do the same. (You can forward this message or make up your own, even urging your choice on others!)

By putting our money where our mouth is, we make a statement that some legislators might heed as evidence of serious protest. Even if they don’t, we at least console ourselves that our small refunds bought valuable services for our common welfare.

Robert and Dorothy Bryant

Berkeley

Prioritize needs: now not time to save Codornices

Editor:

I hadn’t been paying attention to the brouhaha in north Berkeley over the construction of a synagogue in a decaying sylvan area, unnoticed for decades, until I heard about the Save the Creek (Codornices) campaign from an old friend. The friend is a longtime member of the congregation of Beth El, which has outgrown its location and would like to replace it.

Like any longtime resident of Berkeley, I am used to controversy. After all, I have always lived on the south side, the side that usually gets the most attention in the press. The south side is noted for its advocacy of Causes and is especially fierce about Saving the Environment, so when my friend told me about the campaign in north Berkeley, I was interested. I had been on a committee decades ago to plan Willard Park, and our committee had also faced a Save the Creek campaign – Derby Creek – which is underground and, it was thought by some, needed exposure. Eventually, we decided it didn’t. It would have been expensive and difficult to summon up our creek. That campaign was relatively benign and ended quietly.

In the case of the north Berkeley neighborhood campaign, a lot of passionate planning appears to be involved. “Go up and down Oxford and Shattuck,” my friend advised, “There are signs everywhere.” And, she said, they’re all printed the same; no handmade scrawls here. There’s something to be admired about a campaign like that. Solidarity. Unity. But, to the outsider (OK, me) there is a sticky aspect to this campaign: has this subject occupied the neighbors a lot in the past? Or are they really worried about parking disappearing from their streets? (Even people on the south side – dare I say it – are very touchy about parking.) Are they worried about noise emanating from the synagogue and disturbing them? Some of these more common concerns have probably already been brought up and their solutions tackled.

There are many worthwhile causes to be espoused in this world, but because there are so many, sometimes there is a need to establish priorities. As high-minded an idea as the north Berkeley Save the Creek campaign may be, it may also be that the time is not ripe to throw enormous energy into saving the creek. Later, surely, but not right now. The time may be far riper to assure the congregants of Beth El that their desire for a new place of worship is of a higher priority.

Heidi Seney

Berkeley

Republicans got us into energy mess

Editor:

Students of advanced spin strategy could have a field day with the June 14th letter by Shawn Steel, chair of the California Republican Party. In it, Steel lauds “President” Bush for his $1.35 trillion tax cut while blaming Governor Gray Davis for the California energy mess, stating that Davis “is using taxpayer dollars to hire ‘spin doctors’ who handled the Whitewater and Lewinsky scandals in the Clinton White House.”

Though I am no fan of Davis, I seem to recall that it was Republican Pete Wilson and Republican-funded right wing think tanks that brought us the miracle of deregulation, breaking a system that wasn’t broke in the first place. Steel’s attempt to lay blame on Davis is actually the opening salvo of an expensive ad campaign orchestrated by Republican spin doctor Alex Castellanos whom the Los Angeles Times identifies as a Texas media expert and attack ad specialist who worked for the Bush presidential campaign.

Steel’s party is understandably getting antsy about exactly which holes California voters will punch in the next election as they learn more about what the boys on the Houston energy exchange who bankrolled the Cheney presidency are doing to the state’s economy. The GOP needs a scapegoat other than itself.

In a related op ed piece on why the U.S. should not build a national missile defense shield (June 17), Professor Dietrich Fischer states that “The principal beneficiaries - and supporters - of the NMD are U.S. defense contractors who hope to make an estimated $60 to $100 billion at taxpayers’ expense.” Since the Rube Goldberg technology promoted by the Lawrence Livermore lab has yet to be developed and most tests have failed, those oft-repeated figures mean nothing; like the previous nuclear arms race, the NMD is actually a blank check which we taxpayers are about to sign over to the eager weapons contractors and Livermore-Los Alamos scientists.

The confluence of the Republican tax cut, the Houston-generated energy crisis, and the NMD will generate the social and economic equivalent of the Perfect Storm. Unfortunately, we are all in the same boat facing that cresting wave.

Gray Brechin

Berkeley

Israel or oil?

Editor:

Franz Schurman, Berkeley Daily Planet, June 10, writes: “Saudis are prepared to cover all shortages in world markets after Iraq halted all exports.” What the professor left out was another factor, namely, “Saudis are prepared to withdraw all oil from world markets if Israel enlarges the war.”

After that insane suicide bombing in Tel Aviv recently, Israel must widen the war to stay in the picture; this means attacking another Arab country (Sharon said last month, before the Tel Aviv bombing, that he wants “the other side of the Jordan River.”) In 1992, my wife and I were in Israel and we toured down the Israeli side of the Jordan; our tour guide said “See those women working in the fields? They are Jordanians.” Not for long.

If the U.S. must choose between Israel or oil, it will sell out Israel. This is why the CIA sent their top dog to Jerusalem last week; perhaps the professor can tell us about that?

Berkeley’s Aurora Theater opened a well performed but not-quite-satisfying production Thursday of David Mamet’s difficult 1977 backstage story “A Life in the Theater.”

Running one hour and 20 minutes with no intermission, this two-character play is a romantic, nostalgic paean to the life of professional actors working day-in and day-out in a changing series of plays at a repertory theater.

Mamet’s script is a challenging one, and it’s left to the production’s two actors and director to create a drama out of a series of 40 or so vignettes filled with innuendo, in which the story is told indirectly.

Though the performances from actors Michael Shipley and Warren Keith are compelling and empathetic, director Nancy Carlin’s production doesn’t quite manage to rise above the level of an extended vignette and become a full play. In “A Life in the Theater,” older actor Robert (Keith) and younger actor John (Shipley) perform in many short scenes, which include segments from their repertory performances on stage, as well as backstage talk in their dressing room, before, during and after shows.

They play, alternately, World War I British troops in a battlefield trench, dueling foes in Renaissance garb, two dying sailors drifting in a lifeboat, doctors in surgery, businessmen in a love triangle, and an elderly man in a wheelchair with his attendant.

Backstage they change costumes between scenes, gab while working at the make-up table, debate form versus content in art, critique each other’s performances, backbite about other actors, and criticize the critics.

Standing in the wings at one point, they panic over their lines, just before going on stage. They may or may not have a romantic fling.

Mamet’s play about the theatrical changing of the guard is told from the outside in.

Sharing craft discussion, the two men work to understand each other and themselves, and to develop some sort of friendship. Older actor Robert is a lonely man with less life outside the theater than younger John.

Both Aurora performances are large-spirited and sympathetic, but the play is a hard one to direct. Mamet’s style of dialogue employs barbed, elliptical Pinteresque gaps, in which more is unspoken in the words than spoken.

Mamet developed the play originally from a collection of 15 individual scenes that he accumulated one at a time. He then eventually expanded the piece and stitched it into a full evening.

A lot of the dramatic issues between the two characters are not stated directly, or take place offstage, and are then internalized indirectly in later scenes.

Although older actor Robert stumbles by the end of the play, his impact on younger actor John isn’t clearly registered. It’s hard to put your finger on the story in this production.

“A Life in the Theater” is a lesser play by the great David Mamet – a romance about a bygone era, and a love story, of sorts, between two people who can’t express themselves any better than when they act in plays.

Planet theater reviewer John Angell Grant has written for “American Theatre,” “Backstage West,” “Callboard,” and many other publications. E-mail him at jagplays@yahoo.com.

Kalanjali in Concert June 22, 7 p.m. Kalanjali concludes its celebration of its 25th year in Berkeley with a special recital. Experienced dancers and young students, with guests from India including dancer K. P. Yesoda and the musicians of Bharatakalanjali. $6 - $8 Juia Morgan Center for the Arts 2640 Collage Ave. 925-798-1300

“The Laramie Project” Through July 8: Weds. 7 p.m., Tues. and Thur. -Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Written by Moises Kaufmen and members of Tectonic Theater Project, directed by Moises Kaufman. Moises Kaufman and Tectonic members traveled to Laramie, Wyo., after the murder of openly gay student Matthew Shepherd. The play is about the community and the impact Shepherd’s death had on its members. $10 - $50. The Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre 2015 Addison St. 647-2949 www.berkeleyrep.org

“Kid Kaleidoscope and the Puppet Players” June 24: 2 p.m., Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. The Puppet Players are a multi-media musical theatre group. Their shows are masterfully produced to thrill people of all ages with handmadesets and puppets. Adults $10, Children $5, 2640 College 867-7199

“Romeo and Juliet” Through July 14, Thurs. - Sat. 8 p.m. Set in early 1930s just before the rise of Hitler in the Kit Kat Klub, Juliet is torn between ties to the Nazi party and Romeo’s Jewish heritage. $8 - $10. La Val’s Subterranean Theater 1834 Euclid 234-6046

“A Life In the Theatre” Runs through July 15. Wed. - Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. David Mamet play about the lives of two actors, considered a metaphor for life itself. Directed by Nancy Carlin. $30-$35. $26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822

Films

Berkeley Film Makers’ Festival, June 23, 1 p.m. Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery. Presnetation of Six films: The Good War, and Those Who Refused to Fight it (Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada Flores), Just Crazy About Horses (Tim Lovejoy and Joe Wemple), Los Romeros: The Royal Family of the Guitar (L. John Harris and Bill Hayes), In Between the Notes (William Farley and Sandra Sharpe) and KPFA On The Air (Veronica Selver and Sharon Wood). 2220 Shattuck 486-0411

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541

Each morning for the past 28 years, give or take a day, Geneva Agnes Gates Foote has traveled the same path between her Berkeley home and her morning cup of coffee.

Though the path has transformed from dirt to pavement, people in her Westbrae neighborhood have come and gone, and her destination point has changed over time with the opening and closing of Gilman Street coffee shops, her journey has been a constant source of inspiration.

These days her little dog and loyal companion, Betsy Jingle, dances to and fro as Gates Foote walks slowly and cautiously along the path. She holds tightly onto the back of her wheelchair, guided by her husband Abbot Foote. Along the way, he describes the people passing and the blooming flowers.

For many years the path, that runs south under the BART tracks, beginning at Gilman and Curtis streets, revealed itself to Gates Foote through colorful sights and familiar faces. Since she lost her vision in 1972 from complications of diabetes, Gates Foote has relied on sounds and smells and the gentle touch of passersby to envision her surroundings. Her blindness sparked a newfound creative outlet and she began to write.

“Once in a while, a poem would appear and I would write it down. When I was going blind, a lot of poems came to my mind,” she said. “When you can’t see out, you start seeing in, and that’s where poetry lives.”

Since 1998 Gates Foote has self-published five books of poetry and prose. Each carries a resonating theme, be it nature, her past, the colorful characters she’s met along the way, or the pathway she

treads daily.

“If there’s anything,” she says, speaking of what most inspires her, “it’s love and caring. They are the only reasons we are here. It’s too bad we don’t seem to learn that early on.”

Her fourth book, entitled “Geneva’s Path,” celebrates her relationship with the path and sparked the chain of events leading to a dedication ceremony held earlier this month. On June 3, friends and neighbors gathered to witness the dedication of that stretch of land she calls her own which is now officially named the Geneva Agnes Gates Foote Path.

“There is a treed and ivied spot to the right of the paved path which goes from Neilson over to Gilman and Curtis. This path has been mine from the beginning,” she writes in “Geneva’s Path.”

“I know it’s a big ego thing, but maybe someone would think to name it after me.”

And the community pulled together and did just that. With help from neighbors and friends, a petition was circulated gathering more than 100 signatures from the community. It was submitted to Councilmember Linda Maio and Gates Foote’s wish turned into a reality.

“I’m not used to having a fuss made over me. One thing to being blind, you really feel quite invisible,” she said.

At the ceremony Gates Foote’s characteristic strength gave way to sentiment.

“Emotionally I don’t usually tip, but I knew the tears were somewhere back in there,” she said.

Maio presented Gates Foote with a proclamation from the city celebrating the poet’s contributions and commitment to the Westbrae community.

“I was so pleased to be able to finally make this happen,” Maio said. “Geneva is a person who has really learned to get joy from the moment. She reminds herself all the time that even though she may not be able to see the flowers anymore, she can smell them, she can feel the petals.”

As to what she feels is her greatest contribution to the community, Gates Foote believes that an open heart and a listening ear are her most commendable assets.

“I think I just kind of know what people go through and the way the mind works. I always seem to have time to listen,” she said.

In the proclamation from the city she is recognized for her dedication to the maintenance and construction of the path.

“Geneva’s vigilance over the path during its history includes asking her friends to dig trenches along its sides to allow for drainage, calling the city to clear garbage or debris and seeking help when light posts would fall or trees would become uprooted,” it reads.

For 61 years Gates Foote has battled diabetes.

“Sometimes it’s almost impossible, but here I am,” she confides. “Everywhere the people would help me. It’s been really kind of a joint effort to keep me going.”

While holding tight to her strength and self-sufficiency, she has also learned the importance of accepting help from others.

“She still has a natural talent for finding people to help her,” said longtime friend Jean Jaszi.

An occupational therapist for disabled children in her working years, Gates Foote has always been committed to helping others. And because of that selflessness, she has also benefited from an abundance of generous people within her community.

“I’ve had moments where I’ve been aware that everything in my life fits,” she said.

As to what the future holds, Gates Foote has confidence in human nature and at the same time is curious about what’s in store for her.

“I don’t know if I believe in a divine being, but the divinity that is present in each being is enough to live on and to leave with,” she professed.

Two green posts mark the end of Geneva’s Path. She has named them Scylla and Charybdis after characters in Greek mythology. They act as nostalgic mile markers on her path in life. In one of her poems she writes metaphorically about the two posts.

“I wonder about that final path.

Will it be smooth or bumpy?

Will Abbot and Betsy be there to cheer me on?

What will happen when I pass between the posts?”

– from, Between the Posts, in “Geneva’s Path.”

Although she feels a special guardianship over the path, Gates Foote emphasizes that it belongs to anyone who cares to follow its meanderings.

“The path may say Geneva’s Path, but it’s everybody’s. We’re all on the same path, living our lives,” she said.

Born in Boston, Gates Foote has lived in the East Bay for nearly 50 years. She was honored as Woman of the Year by the city in 2001. Her next book of poetry and prose, “Traveler of the Dark,” will come out next month. Some of her books can be found in Westbrae neighborhood shops such as Tiddly Winks and Natural Grocery or at Hida Tool on San Pablo Avenue and Pegasus on Solano Avenue.

Cal completed the 2000-01 academic year with a final 12th-place standing in the Sears Directors’ Cup competition, the Golden Bears highest finish ever.

Cal’s best previous placing was 13th in 1994-95. This also mark’s the school’s third consecutive year of improvement after taking 23rd in 1998-99 and 15th last year.

The Sears Cup measures a school’s overall level of athletic success based on performances of teams in 20 selected sports and ranks all 318 NCAA Division I institutions.

Cal had a particularly impressive spring, with eight sports receiving NCAA Tournament invitations and six teams finishing in the Top 25 in the nation. Women’s rowing and softball placed sixth, with both men’s and women’s tennis taking ninth place, women’s golf 19th and men’s track & field 22nd. In addition, the Bears received points from baseball (33rd) and men’s golf (48th).

Other teams that gained Top 25 status during the year were: men’s gymnastics (3rd), women’s gymnastics (19th), women’s swimming (7th), men’s swimming (8th) and women’s soccer (17th). Cal also scored points in men’s basketball with the team’s bid to the NCAA Tournament.

However, Cal’s finish could have been even higher except that four teams that finished among the top four in the nation did not contribute to the standings. Both rugby and men’s crew defended their national titles, but neither sport competes under the NCAA umbrella. In addition, men’s and women’s water polo were ranked fourth in the final polls, but the Bears were not among the four teams invited to the NCAA championships, and thus received no Sears Cup points.

Queer organizations, overwhelmed by an increasing demand for services, may find a way out in the next few years through the opening of a new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community center in Berkeley.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, a number of representatives from East Bay queer organizations called on the city to help build the center.

Proposed in May by City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, the project is just at its starting point, but it appears to have gathered the support of at least three other councilmembers and Mayor Shirley Dean. The center is also included in the city manager‘s budget proposal for the next fiscal year. If the current proposal is adopted at the end of June, the project will receive $25,000 for preliminary planning purposes.

The details of the project haven’t been set yet, but the goal is to build a new and modern facility that includes space for LGBT groups and businesses, for public meetings , and for housing. The building would have disabled accessibility and would be environmentally sustainable. It would offer social services, such as mental health counseling or HIV services, as well as community-oriented activities.

The project was initiated when staff members of the Pacific Center for Human Growth - Berkeley’s main LGBT service provider - approached Worthington two months ago. At that time, the center suffered from a lack of space and its services were already strained.

“Since the Pacific Center has been in its current location for over 25 years, the facility is absolutely too small and we don’t have room for our 180 volunteers and all the support groups,” said Executive Director Frank Gurucharri. “We turned down a significant number of requests, and we have a long waiting list for mental health clients.”

The Pacific Center is likely to become one of the major partners in the new facility and therefore use the largest amount of space. However, the purpose of the LGBT community center project, is not only to provide the Pacific Center with a larger facility, it aims at filling the need for more services by promoting the collaboration between different organizations and at giving Berkeley’s queer population a sense of community.

“It would provide space for other kind of organizations to interact and increase civic awareness and visibility for the whole community,” explained James Green, who chairs the board of Gender Education and Advocacy, Inc. and supports the proposed center.

It is still unclear how many groups would be part of the new facility, but leaders of the project are trying to include a great diversity of organizations, with a particular emphasis on women’s groups.

“A really significant part of this project stresses the feminist angle and makes sure that women are included in the leadership and the decision making,” said East Bay Lesbian/Gay Democratic Club member Nancy Carleton, who attended Tuesday’s City Council meeting. For instance, Worthington recently asked Mama Bears, a women’s bookstore in Oakland, to participate in the planning process.

While they wait for the budget to be approved, supporters are contacting a variety of individuals and foundations to start raising the estimated $5-$6 million for the building. It could take at least three years before the new center opens its doors.

The Pacific-10 Conference’s 2001 spring academic teams have been announced by Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen. A total of 51 Cal athletes were honored, including 20 selections to the first and second teams.

To be eligible for selection to the academic teams, a student-athlete must have a minimum 3.0 overall grade-point average, be a significant contributor to the team and be at least a second-year competitor in the sport at the league school.

A group of about 50 teachers, parents, principals and administrators turned out before the school board meeting Wednesday to bid a fond farewell to Berkeley school district

nterim Superintendent Stephen Goldstone. Goldstone will step down July 6 to make way the recently selected permanent Superintendent, Michele Barraza Lawrence.

“My heart is broken,” said Cheryl Chinn, principal of the Malcolm X Arts and Academic Magnet School, at the farewell reception Wednesday. “This is one superintendent who stepped up to the plate and made really serious decisions about what needed to be done in Berkeley.”

Chinn and other principals present Wednesday credited Goldstone with making real improvements in district central office services that have been “dysfunctional” for years.

Berkeley Arts Magnet principal Lorna Skantze-Neill said this in the first year in memory where key instructional materials she ordered in the spring, to prepare for the coming school year, were actually delivered to the school before then end of the school year. In the past she has been lucky to see all the materials by the end of the summer, she said.

“He made more changes than any (superintendent) I’ve ever seen,” Skantze-Neill said.

Principals, teachers and parents alike applauded Goldstone Wednesday for making a constant effort to get out into the community and listen to what people had to say – in marked contrast to earlier superintendents who they said seemed to focus on other parts of the job. He was a constant presence at PTA meetings, principal meetings, school dramatic performances and more, they said.

“I just don’t believe he was one person,” said Washington School Principal Rita Kimball, still marveling at the way Goldstone seemed to be everywhere at once.

Kimball said Goldstone made it clear that providing services and support to the individual schools – and the students that fill their classrooms – was his top priority.

When he visited Washington, said Kimball, “He looked like, ‘I have all the time in the world. This is what I’m here for.’”

Christine Lim, associate superintendent of instruction for the district, said Goldstone went to great lengths to maintain staff morale within the district. For the Day of the Teacher in May, he asked administrators to come to work by 5:30 a.m. so they could polish up more than 300 apples and deliver them to Berkeley High teachers by hand, Lim said.

“You should have seen their faces,” Lim said. “It was like you had given them 100 dollar bills.”

But Goldstone’s most lasting legacy, said Lim and others, may be his move to completely restructure the district’s business office. By creating a clear line of command from the superintendent on down, they said, Goldstone’s reorganization could bring greater accountability to an office where, as one observer put it, “the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand it doing.”

“It’s so big because for so long the principals have felt that the business office has been so unresponsive and dysfunctional,” Lim said.

In some cases, school principals couldn’t get the accurate, timely information they needed to plan their school budgets, Lim said, leaving them to wait in frustration as important decisions went unmade.

Goldstone, an avid beach-goer from his time spent working in southern California school districts, said Wednesday he plans to vacation in Mexico with his wife this summer before deciding the next move in his career. He is very interested in other interim superintendent jobs in the Bay Area, he said, should they become available.

His only fear, he told those gathered at the reception Wednesday, is that his next interim superintendency might not be as rewarding as his time in Berkeley.

“This have been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life,” Goldstone said. “And it’s because of all of you.”

When he began the job in February, Goldstone said he was somewhat apprehensive that, as an interim superintendent, he might not command the respect of more long-term appointee. But, he said, “that has not been the case (in Berkeley).

Things haven’t come easily for the City of Franklin Microsociety Magnet School.

When the school, located at Virginia Street and San Pablo Avenue, opened its doors in the fall of 1999, the federal grant money awarded as part of its “magnet” status had yet to arrive in the mail, said Addie Holsing, an educational consultant who works closely with the school.

Franklin teachers had yet to be trained in how to implement the microsociety model: an innovative educational philosophy that calls for making the school a mirror image of the community around it – with banks, businesses, a city council and so forth – so students can see how the skills they are taught in school are applied in “the real world.”

Teaching materials were bare bones, with little money allotted for extras such as art supplies and library books.

“Franklin has sort of been the stepchild of the school district because they weren’t sure we could create a community and pull this off,” Holsing said.

But even before the school opened its doors, the community came together to lend its support, said City of Franklin Parent Coordinator and PTA Co-president Marissa Saunders.

Parents volunteered to clean the rooms of the old school building – which the school district had been renting out before increased enrollment spurred the creation of City of Franklin in 1999 – desk by desk. They volunteered to weed the gardens and spread a new coat of paint where needed.

Through the school’s outreach efforts, businesses and organizations stepped forward one by one to offer their support.

The League of Women Voters volunteered to help with the school’s election day, sending its members to explain the duties of various civic offices and to oversee the school’s election process.

The Chamber of Commerce invited students to run a booth at the Berkeley business fair each year. Volunteers from UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science visited classrooms to make science-related presentations. This past year, the congregation of the Church By The Side Of The Road raised $3,000 to pay for a fourth grade field trip into the Sierras. Franklin students spent three days panning for gold while they learned about the role of black and Latino cowboys in California history.

Just this week, Check Center, located on San Pablo Avenue, four blocks south of Franklin, announced that it had raised $1,600 to buy 100 dictionaries for the school: 10 for each classroom. Until now the school has made due with a handful dictionaries contributed by parents, Saunders said.

“We’re coming up with a wish list and (the community) is checking it off,” Saunders said.

Franklin students made colorful signs asking check cashing customers to set aside a few dollars for their school. Nearly 200 customers made donations ranging from $1 to $50, said Check Center manager Vanessa Calhoun. The store matched its customers’ contributions to bring the total to $1,600, she added.

“The customers loved it,” Calhoun said. “We still have customers coming in – even though we’ve met our goal – saying, ‘No, I said I was going to give.’”

With the donations still flowing, Calhoun said she is in discussions with the City of Franklin to determine how it might make use of another contribution in the future.

Collaborations like this advance the City of Franklin’s education goals in more ways than one, Holsing said Wednesday. By playing a role in the school’s outreach efforts, Franklin students learn a powerful lesson about the importance of collaboration in advancing the goals of a community, she said.

It helps the school “turn out the inclusive, thinking young people that Berkeley values as citizens,” she added.

A West Coast Pizza employee was robbed at gun point Tuesday night on the 1600 block of Harmon Street, according to police.

Two large pizzas were ordered, but when the delivery person came, a man sitting on a nearby porch yelled to him that he was the one who had ordered the pizzas, Lt. Russell Lopes said. When the delivery person crossed the street another male allegedly appeared with a shotgun and pointed it at the West Coast Pizza employee, ordering him to place the pizzas on the ground. The delivery person dropped the pizzas, ran to his car and drove back to West Coast Pizza where he called police.

•••

A 30-year-old man was attacked and robbed while walking to his home from the Downtown Berkeley BART on Monday at 11 p.m. The victim was approached by three males walking in the opposite direction, Lopes said. The largest of the three allegedly punched the victim in the face which made the victim fall immediately to the ground. The other two suspects allegedly grabbed him while he was on the ground and stole his backpack, wallet and jacket. The victim had a swollen jaw but required no medical attention, Lopes said.

LOS ANGELES — U.S. students lack general knowledge about Asia – the most populous and fastest-growing area in the world – partly because materials used in schools are outdated, superficial, and even inaccurate, a study found.

The study released Wednesday by the National Commission on Asia in the Schools analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of current teaching and learning about Asia and Asian-American topics in primary and secondary classrooms.

Although many schools work to incorporate Asia-related content into their curriculum, teachers lack adequate background and often teach without the benefit of quality instructional materials, the commission found.

”(Prospective teachers) are not required to take any kind of specialized course (about) Asia as part of their teacher training program,” said Nancy Girvin, a commissioner and also director of curriculum and instruction at Cajon Valley Union School District. “So we bring our teachers into the classroom with little or no knowledge about Asia and expect them to teach a curriculum that involves topics related to Asia.”

Classroom resources, especially textbooks, also contribute to the problem, Girvin said. They remain the most widely used classroom resource but commissioners found few that do a good job contextualizing the continent. After reviewing textbooks, ample opportunity for improvement was discovered.

There were factual inaccuracies, cliches and misspellings of Asian names and terms. The commission – which includes education, policy, business, media and civic leaders – also found textbooks often portrayed Asian countries as universally exotic, impoverished, or both.

James Hunt, former governor of North Carolina who chaired the study, said he was surprised by the findings.

“I was shocked how uninformed the American people are about Asia,” he said. “For example, we discovered one out of four college-bound high school students cannot name the ocean that lies between the United States and Asia.”

The study also found 82 percent of adults and 74 percent of students agree that there is a connection between Asia and America’s future, with most saying it is important to learn about Asia because of its influence on the U.S. economy and population.

However, less the 20 percent of adults and students knew that India – with a population more than four times bigger than the United States – is the world’s largest democracy. And despite the painful legacy of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, half the adults and two-thirds of the students incorrectly identified it as an island nation, the study found.

“We have to get across to our students that learning about Asia is absolutely essential to our future,” Hunt said.

The National Commission on Asia in the Schools is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to fostering understanding of Asia and communication between Americans and Asians.

Police have asked Rep. Gary Condit for a second interview about his relationship with a missing 24-year-old woman.

Chandra Levy of Modesto has not been seen in seven weeks, shortly after finishing an internship with the federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington.

“We’d like to know more about his relationship with Miss Levy and what insight he might have into her mindset,” said Terrance W. Gainer, Washington’s No. 2 police official. “We want to find out more about her and how she lived and what she was thinking.”

Gainer said police could talk to Condit as early as Wednesday night, but that no time had been set.

Condit, 53, has described Levy as a “good friend” but has otherwise kept quiet publicly about his relationship with the University of Southern California graduate student.

Levy’s mother, Susan, has said her daughter told her she was seeing the congressman, who is married. The family lives in Condit’s district.

Gainer said Condit “is absolutely not a suspect” in Levy’s disappearance, which police consider a missing persons case, not a crime. The congressman was interviewed by police once before.

Calls to Condit’s offices in Washington and Modesto were not immediately returned. Calls to his lawyer, Joseph W. Cotchett of Burlingame, also were not returned.

Levy’s parents traveled to Washington late Tuesday to meet with their new lawyer, Billy Martin. Martin’s clients have included the mother of Monica Lewinsky and heavyweight boxer Riddick Bowe. He currently is representing Cincinnati as the Justice Department investigates the city’s police force.

Martin spent part of the day Wednesday in Cincinnati. He later returned to Washington and said he planned to meet with the Levys.

They might hold a news conference Thursday, he said.

Police also would like to talk to the Levys, but no time has been set, Gainer said.

Gainer said police still do not have a good idea about what happened to Levy, even after examining her bank, computer and telephone records.

“We don’t have any particular direction to go,” he said.

Levy was last seen April 30 at a Washington gym. She was expected to return to California a few days later for her graduation from USC with a master’s degree in public administration.

When police searched her apartment they found no signs of foul play. Only her keys were missing.

As flags flew at half staff on state buildings a day after California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk died, speculation ran rampant Wednesday over who would succeed the state’s longest-serving justice.

The 88-year-old Mosk, the panel’s only Democrat, died unexpectedly Tuesday after complaining of chest pains the day before. His death has left a vacuum on the seven-member panel, where he served 37 years.

Aides to Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who must appoint a successor, said the governor has neither picked a nominee nor set a timetable for filling the void.

Mosk had spoken with the governor about retiring, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. McLean wouldn’t confirm that, or say whether Davis had begun considering a new appointee even before Mosk’s death.

“Whether they spoke or not about a potential retirement, he has not brought forth any names either privately or publicly,” McLean said.

She said any nominee would have to be evaluated by the State Bar before Davis makes a nomination. The nominee must be confirmed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, an appellate court justice and Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

“Anybody who reports to know of any short list is in my view not well informed. I’m convinced the governor will be setting up a wide-ranging process for one or more candidates for review,” George said.

But the governor’s silence hasn’t stopped rampant speculation over who may replace a man George described as a “legal giant.”

Insiders and scholars suggested a hodgepodge of candidates that may emerge as leading contenders, including Los Angeles federal judge Carlos Moreno. He was appointed by President Clinton and would become the court’s only Hispanic.

Legal experts said Davis may sway to federal judges because the modern tradition of tapping state appellate court justices may be a tough sell. He has appointed just 10 appellate justices, and the bulk of the appeals bench includes those appointed by Republican governors during the past two decades.

“He doesn’t have a crop of recent young justices that he may elevate. It’s kind of anybody’s guess,” said Jay Eisen, a Sacramento appellate attorney.

Even so, on the appellate judge level, some experts pointed to Arthur Gilbert, a 2nd District Court of Appeal justice in Ventura who took the bench in 1982 upon Gov. Jerry Brown’s appointment.

“This is a very early moment to be asking these questions,” said Gilbert, declining to say whether he was interested in the post. “People are trying to get over the fact that we lost a giant in the law.”

Other Davis appeals court appointees mentioned as potential candidates include Los Angeles Justice Candace Cooper; Santa Ana Justice Kathleen Elizabeth O’Leary; San Francisco Justice Mark Simons, and Los Angeles Justice Kathryn Doi Todd. But those appeals court justices may not meet race considerations. Some say the governor wants a sitting judge who is a Hispanic Democrat and one who accepts Davis’ pro-death penalty position and other political views.

The high court runs the racial gamut, but has no Hispanic member.

“In the abstract we say race, gender and party affiliation should have nothing to do with that,” said San Francisco appellate Justice Carol A. Corrigan. “A contrary argument is that there is a value to have the court reflect the broader face of California.”

Stephen Barnett, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who closely follows the state Supreme Court, said he wants Davis to consider lawyers that are not judges.

“I think the governor should not limit himself to a sitting judge of the court of appeal,” he said.

A potential Hispanic candidate who is not a judge could be Vilma Martinez, a Los Angeles lawyer and former University of California regent, Barnett said. Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, said Martinez would be an “excellent choice” for the court.

Others discounted Martinez, saying Davis may not risk giving the job to someone without judicial experience.

Martinez, former head of the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, refused to say whether she was in the running.

The orbits of Earth and Mars is bringing the two planets the closest they have been in 13 years. That has left Mars to shine brightly in the night sky, its tawny red color obvious to even naked-eye astronomers.

“Mars is the brightest thing in the evening sky, unless the moon is out,” said John Mosley, an astronomer at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

Stargazers in the southern hemisphere have the better view of the planet, which appears high in the sky. But anyone in the northern hemisphere can still see Mars as it lurks low in the south, near the constellation Scorpius.

Earthlings get a particularly good view of Mars once about every 26 months. During what is called planetary opposition, Earth aligns itself roughly between Mars and the sun.

The opposition began on Monday, but on Thursday, Mars will be the closest it has been since 1988: about 42 million miles.

The two planets will be even closer – just 35 million miles apart – in August 2003.

“It will be the closest approach of Mars to Earth in at least 5,000 years; probably more like 100,000 years,” said Myles Standish, an astronomer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Earth’s sweep near Mars comes a few months before NASA’s latest Mars mission enters orbit around the Red Planet in October.

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft, launched in April, is expected to arrive in Mars orbit on Oct. 23 and begin taking measurements to determine the composition of the planet’s surface and search for water or shallow ice beneath the planet’s surface.

Many scientists speculate that the planet could have once harbored life, or may still, and NASA’s missions to the planet have sought evidence of water.

Recent tests of the spacecraft’s instruments and systems by JPL engineers showed everything was working fine. NASA came under increased criticism in 1999 after both its Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander missions failed.

The closeness of the two planets is significant for the launch dates of such missions. Standish compared the launching of spacecraft between the planets to tossing a ball between two moving vehicles.

“Earth and Mars are like a couple of race cars going around a race track. If you’re going to throw a ball from Earth to Mars, you have to throw before you catch up and you have to aim at a spot ahead of Mars,” Standish said.

“The timing is much more crucial than the closeness,” he added.

A missed launch opportunity would mean having to wait more than two years for the next approach.

For the Earth-bound, Mars should remain bright through October.

Mosley said while a telescope is needed to see any of the planet’s surface features, including its brilliant polar caps, anyone can see Mars with just their eyes.

“It’s easy to see, no trouble at all to see in your backyard. Everyone should go out and see it,” he said. “Mars rules.”

SACRAMENTO — For any lover of trees, the deadly fungus called Sudden Oak Death is alarming enough, as it has killed thousands of oaks in Northern California.

Beside the environmental damage, however, fire experts worry the thousands of dry, dead oaks drooping along the northern coast are potential torches waiting to light up during one of the most dangerous fire seasons in years.

Dryer than healthy trees, infected oaks are more likely to catch fire and turn into conduits for racing flames and exploding embers carried by the wind, fire prevention experts said.

When they burn, dead trees “generate a lot of heat and make fires burn hotter and make them more difficult to control,” said Louis Blumberg, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Fires ignite more easily and the trees become fuel.”

So many dead oaks are making this year’s fire season the most dangerous in years, experts said.

Already, state forestry and fire protection officials declared fire season a month earlier this year, as they went to peak staffing because of record heat, unusual dryness and erratic winds.

“The northern 40 percent of the state this year is extremely dry or in drought conditions,” Blumberg said.

“We’ve already seen 12 major forest fires in California by this time, when it’s usually one or two,” said Matthew Mathes, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

On Sunday, a huge fire erupted in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Truckee, Calif., and burned toward Reno, Nev. Flames and smoke also led authorities to close Interstate 80.

Last week, Gov. Gray Davis cited a 68 percent increase in wildfires and issued a new fire plan that includes buying equipment, hiring new firefighters and preparing the state National Guard. “This could be one of the worst fire seasons in California history,” he said.

The CDF is responsible for about a third of the 101 million acres in California, with a budget of $380 million. This year, it has asked for and received an additional $24 million. The department responds to an average of 6,700 fires a year covering almost 160,000 acres, said Karen Terrill, a CDF spokeswoman.

The CDF also received $2.8 million from the federal government to prepare for fire season.

“One of our main concerns is all the dead trees in those” seven counties where Sudden Oak Death is a problem, Terrill said. Some of the precautions include sawing off dry weed and brush that could conduct flames.

Caused by a newly described fungus called Phytophthora, Sudden Oak Death also resembles the species that caused the 1845 potato famine in Ireland. Since the disease first appeared in 1995 in Mill Valley, Calif., it has killed tens of thousands of oak trees from Sonoma County to Big Sur. It attacks tanoak, coastal live oak and black oak, and scientists still don’t know how the disease is spread.

While a major concern in California, Sudden Oak Death has other states alarmed as well. In January, Oregon officials imposed a quarantine on oak firewood and nursery stock from California. Dead oaks in California led to them being cut for firewood and then shipped out of state.

A series of measures in the California Legislature and Congress would give more funds to fighting the Sudden Oak Death and reducing its fire hazards.

The Assembly passed a bill by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, that calls for $4.7 million to cut the risks of Sudden Oak Death by clearing dead trees and other measures. The state Senate has a similar bill pending.

In Congress, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is sponsoring legislation that would provide more than $70 million over the next five years for researching the disease and preparing for fire risks. Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Santa Rosa, has sponsored a similar bill in the House.

In the revised May budget, Davis proposed $1.9 million for research and fire precaution.

“I’m not, senator,” Greenspan replied when asked by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., at a hearing whether he was concerned about a potential slide back into government deficit spending.

On another economic issue, Greenspan said that a recent increase in job layoffs – new claims for state unemployment insurance have risen to more than 400,000 a week – will affect consumers’ confidence and willingness to keep buying.

However, he added, there hasn’t been “any real serious deterioration” in spending.

During questioning, Schumer and several other Democratic senators prodded the central bank chief to express concern over the big 10-year tax cut, given the state of the economy and the low savings rate of Americans. The tax cut, recently enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, is the centerpiece of Bush’s economic program.

Greenspan lent crucial support to Bush’s tax-cut proposal in January, and has subsequently stated his belief that reducing taxes is a preferred use for ballooning budget surpluses.

In his testimony before the Banking Committee, Greenspan said the sagging economy has brought more problem loans and made bankers fairly tightfisted. He cited weaknesses in retailing, manufacturing, health care, telecommunications and among California utilities, strapped by high wholesale electricity prices they are barred from passing on to consumers.

Bank regulators “need to be more sensitive to problems at individual banks, both currently and in the months ahead,” Greenspan said at the hearing on the state of the nation’s financial system.

“We are fortunate that our banking system entered this period of weak economic performance in a strong position,” he said.

Greenspan did not discuss the future course of interest-rate policy.

To ward off recession, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates five times this year. Many analysts predict policy-makers will make a sixth cut at the end of their two-day meeting June 27.

Greenspan’s remarks come as Americans’ personal debt is at an all-time high. Mortgage delinquencies and write-offs by credit card companies are rising, and personal bankruptcy filings could hit a record this year.

During questioning, Greenspan suggested that the problem of Americans’ low savings rate – which stood at a negative 0.7 percent of after-tax income in April – is tempered by the “extraordinary degree of productivity from our savings.”

One of his fellow Fed governors, Edward Gramlich, said in a speech Wednesday that personal saving is vital for households to maintain their standard of living, and more work should be done to help consumers – especially low- and moderate-income families – improve their financial situation.

WASHINGTON — The state attorneys general who pursued the antitrust case against Microsoft are privately discussing a new lawsuit, concerned that the software giant’s latest products will unfairly hamper competition, two leaders say.

Attorneys General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Tom Miller of Iowa said they’re particularly concerned about Microsoft’s plans to bundle new features into its Windows XP operating system, due out this fall, and to offer new Web-based subscription services.

“Microsoft seems to be using much of its power to preclude competition on a new platform,” said Miller, who organized the 19 attorneys general who joined the Justice Department in the current antitrust suit.

“This is what they did before and this is what they’re doing again to maintain their monopoly,”

Miller said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Blumenthal said the states were discussing the possibility of a second lawsuit as one of several options, even as the current case awaits a ruling in federal appeals court.

“We haven’t reached a point where we’re discussing it publicly,” Blumenthal said.

Another option, according to Miller and Blumenthal, is to bring up concerns about the new products as part of the current case if the appeals judges send it back to a lower court.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is in Washington this week, meeting with congressional leaders and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The White House said the antitrust case didn’t come up in the Cheney meeting.

The company says any talk of additional litigation is premature since most of the products cited by critics aren’t even finished yet. And it says its goal isn’t to monopolize but to give customers want they want.

“The key point in this whole process is that users decide if they want to use Web services and what information they want to give,” Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said.

The nation’s attorneys general are meeting in Vermont this week for their annual conference. A group backed by Microsoft’s rivals made a presentation Wednesday in an effort to persuade the states to file a second antitrust suit to stop Microsoft’s new products.

The group, called ProComp, includes Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Netscape, a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner. ProComp director Mike Pettit wrote a 59-page paper criticizing Microsoft’s practices.

Blumenthal said the competitors’ concern that Microsoft may try to extend its market dominance is valid.

“They certainly raise the prospect, if not the probability of the same dangers and potential harms that resulted from past practices that were proved at trial,” Blumenthal said.

Miller agreed: “It sounds at least on the surface to be very familiar as to the maintenance-of-monopoly case that we’ve had.”

Blumenthal said the attorneys general also are prepared to continue to pursue their case against Microsoft even if the Bush Justice Department seeks to settle the current case.

“We have never said that the Justice Department was an essential partner,” he said. “Certainly a critically important one, but never a prerequisite to our pursuing the case. We are absolutely determined to pursue this case.”

Last year, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ordered Microsoft broken in two for antitrust violations. He concluded the company unfairly tied its Windows operating system to its Explorer Web browser in order to gain and keep a software monopoly.

Microsoft appealed to the federal appeals court in Washington, and awaits a decision.

Windows XP, due to be released in October, will enhance the company’s recently announced Internet initiatives, called Hailstorm and .NET. The company’s new philosophy is to encourage customers to store their data on the Internet, accessible from anywhere on any device. Hailstorm and .NET rely on Microsoft’s software architecture on network servers, desktop computers and handheld devices. Windows XP, too, will offer for free many new features that competitors charge for.

Over the weekend, Microsoft and AOL stopped negotiating how to place AOL’s software on Windows XP, leaving open the possibility that AOL might sue its rival.

Cullinan said one reason the talks broke down is that AOL would not preclude legal action. “There’s no way we were going to include them in Windows XP if they were going to sue us over Windows XP,” Cullinan said.

AOL vice president John Buckley said his firm didn’t want to give up its right to sue, although he said that doesn’t mean AOL has such plans.

OAKLAND – Adding 21 months to the original plea bargain agreement between prosecutors and the defense, a federal judge sentenced wealthy Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy Tuesday to 97 months in prison and the payment to his victims of $2 million in restitution.

Reddy pleaded guilty March 7 to one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, two counts of transporting a minor for illegal sex and one count of submitting a false tax return in 1998 by lying about his foreign bank accounts in India.

In the Tuesday morning standing-room only court session, federal District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong refused the plea deal and sent the two parties back to the negotiating table for some fine tuning. The judge argued that the original six and one-half year prison term should be enhanced because Reddy had participated in the obstruction of justice after his arrest and the victims had received severe psychological trauma as a result of their ordeal.

By 3 p.m., the two sides had agreed to accept a stiffer sentence.

At the same time, the judge used her discretion to knock off some of Reddy’s potential jail time because he said he was remorseful for his acts.

The judge’s call for the longer sentence was motivated by an investigative report written by a federal probation officer. According to the report, Reddy’s relatives gave three of the victims, identified only as victims No. 4, 5 and 7, airplane tickets to go to India, gave the girls money and instructed them stay away from the village where they grew up and where Reddy still owns a villa.

In India, Armstrong said, the three victims were brought to the villa. “Reddy spoke to each by telephone, telling them to stay (in India) until they were told they could return to the United States.”

Reddy’s attorney, Ted Cassman, said Reddy spoke with one, not three of the girls, although the others might have been on the phone line. And he argued that the conversation was not willful obstruction of justice. Rather, according to Cassman, Reddy advised the young woman, known as Victim No. 5, to stay in India, until “everything was OK.” Then Cassman said Reddy told her: “I’ll find you a new husband.”

U.S. Attorney John Kennedy, the prosecutor, echoed what Cassman had said, but the judge responded that the “court obviously has a responsibility to make its own assessment.”

The second reason for the enhanced sentencing cited by the judge was the “psychological injuries the victims have sustained.”

Armstrong spoke about Reddy’s impact on the victims’ lives, noting that Victim No. 1 had endured physical, sexual and verbal abuse for over seven years. As a result, she experiences severe headaches, depression and panic attacks. She even tried to kill herself.

The judge underscored the “severity,” and “duration,” of the crimes and that the women were as young as 13 years old. “Here they are isolated, without friends and family and a support system. They were fully dependent on (Reddy) for care,” she said.

Kennedy argued the original plea bargain took into account the “vulnerable age” of the girls in question and “Mr. Reddy’s leadership role was factored in.”

The idea of the plea bargain was to get the funds to the victims as soon as possible so that they could pay for counseling and move ahead in their lives, Kennedy said.

But Armstrong argued that restitution was not a motivating factor, since “the victims were offered large sums of money not to come back to the United States” and they came back anyway.

Both the prosecution and the defense attorneys argued that the victims wanted the case put to rest and did not want it to go to trial, where they would have to testify against Reddy. “Mostly, they want it to be over,” said Cassman’s law partner, Cristina Arguedas.

The victims’ lawyers, who may file a civil lawsuit, spoke before the judge, confirming that they did not want the case to go to trial.

Armstrong responded, however, that “the case is not just about these victims. It is the intent of society to insure that this does not continue. It’s not just about these individuals.”

Arguedas further argued that Reddy, 64, would be 70 when he left prison, and should not be kept there any longer than six years. But Armstrong once again reminded the court that the girls were as young as 13 when Reddy gained control over them.

At that, applause broke out in the courtroom. The clerk of the court silenced the spectators.

Arguedas continued, explaining to the judge that she understood the ages of the girls was a factor and did not mean to “minimize the vulnerability of the victims.”

“(Reddy) was here, sobbing about it when he entered his plea,” she said, reminding the court that “these events are not the sum total of his life.”

The judge took that into consideration.

She told the court that, along with letters calling for a lengthy prison sentence, she had received letters touting Reddy’s virtues, including his philanthropy. Reddy funded a school in India, among other good works.

“I think the judge made a very fair decision,” Arguedas said, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom. “I think she put a lot of care and thought into it. She balanced a lot of competing considerations. It was a just result and she has to be credited for it.”

It has not yet been determined where Reddy will serve his sentence. He will be eligible for parole after six years and 10 months.

Public speaking skills and metaphysics come together. Ongoing first and third Thursdays each month. 869-2547

LGBT Catholics Group

7:30 p.m.

Newman Hall

2700 Dwight Way (at College)

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender Catholics group are “a spiritual community committed to creating justice.” This session will be a “Pride Mass.” 654-5486

Summer Noon Concerts 2001

Noon - 1 p.m.

Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza

Shattuck at Center St.

Weekly concert series. This week Capoeira Arts Cafe.

Community Tribute to Jeffrey

Leiter

5 p.m. Dinner, 8 p.m. Performance

Santa Fe Bar and Grill

1310 University Avenue

The Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is hosting a Community Tribute to honor former Mayor and Symphony Board President Jeffrey Shattuck Leiter. Dinner at Santa Fe Bar and Grill, followed by an 8 p.m. Berkeley Symphony performance at Zellerbach Hall. For information and tickets, call 841-2800

Global Trade

and Local Environments

7 - 9 p.m.

Ecology Center

2530 San Pablo Avenue

Panel discussion with Antonia Juhasz, Martin Wagner, and Andrea del Moral. Also a community discussion and network-building, related resources. Potluck.

548-2220 ext. 233

Friday, June 22

Living Philosophers

10 a.m. - Noon

North Berkeley Senior Center

1901 Hearst Ave. (at MLK Jr. Way)

Hear and entertain the ideas of some modern day philosophers: Jacob Needleman, J. Revel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, Saul Kripke, Richard Rorty and others. Every Friday, except holidays. Facilitated by H.D. Moe.

Therapy for Trans Partners

6 - 7:30 p.m.

Pacific Center for Human Growth

2712 Telegraph Ave. (at Derby)

A group open to partners of those in transition or considering transition. The group is structured to be a safe place to receive support from peers and explore a variety of issues, including sexual orientation, coming out, feelings of isolation, among other topics. Intake process required. Meeting Fridays through August 17.

This week featuring Jeffrey Riegle, Ph.D., on “Historical Reasons for China’s Current Conduct.” Come early for social hour. Lunch at 11:45 for $11-$12.25. Come at 12:30 to hear the speaker only for $1, students free. Reservations for three or more. 848-3533

Saturday, June 23

“Feast of Fire” benefit for the Crucible

10:30 p.m.

The Crucible

1036 Ashby Ave.

Act III, The Flight of Icarus, will feature live music and performances by several groups including Capacitor and Xeno. Price of admission benefits the Crucible, a multi-disciplinary community arts center. $20 at the door.

Berkeley Farmers’ Market

Summer Solstice Celebration

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Civic Center Park

Center St. and MLK Jr. Way

Farmers market plus crafts fair and live reggae and jazz.

548-3333

Strawberry Creek Walking Tour

10 a.m. - Noon

Learn about Strawberry Creek’s history, explore its neighborhoods, and consider its potential. Meet four experts on the local creeks. Reservations required,

call 848-0181.

Energy-Efficient

Wood Windows

9:30 - 11:30 a.m.

Truitt and White Lumber

642 Hearst Avenue

Free seminar by Marvin Window’s representative Chris Martin on how to measure and install the double-hung Tilt Pac replacement unit, as well as a review of the full line of Marvin’s energy-efficient wood windows. 649-2574

What You Need to Know Before You Build or Remodel

10 a.m. - Noon

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by professional builder Glen Kitzenberger.

525-7610

Choosing to Add On: The Pros and Cons of Building an Addition

Noon - 2 p.m.

The Building Education Center

812 Page Street

Free seminar by author/designer Skip Wenz

525-7610

Sunday, June 24

Hands-On Bicycle

Repair Clinics

11 a.m. - Noon

Recreational Equipment, Inc.

1338 San Pablo Ave.

Learn how to fix a flat from one of REI’s bike technicians. All you need to bring is your bike. Free

527-4140

— compiled by Sabrina Forkish and Guy Poole

Uncle Eye

2 p.m.

Berkeley-Richmond Jewish

Community Center

1414 Walnut Ave.

Come see Ira Levin, a.k.a. Uncle Eye, give a special performance as a fundraiser for a television pilot to be filmed this summer. $7 - $10.

848-0237 or www.uncle-eye.com

Carefree/Carfree Tour

1 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Artful garden tour, part of the Berkeley Arts Festival. Ride AC Transit to Marcia Donohue and Mark Bulwinkle’s Our Own Stuff Garden and Gallery, then walk to the Dry Garden.

486-0411

Carefree/Carfree Tour #2

1:30 p.m.

Berkeley Arts Festival Gallery

2200 Shattuck Avenue

Ride the bus to the Codornices Creek Restoration Project and the Peralta Community Garden and enjoy a concert by Nicole Miller.

When a person is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, attention immediately shifts to him or her. The physician focuses on treatment and cure. Family and friends visit or call to inquire about the welfare of the patient. The caregiver, on the other hand, is most often forgotten.

In the case of a terminal or fatal illness that may last years, it’s a long period of care for the

patient. It’s a long period for the caregiver to be giving his or her all. Professional literature on care for the caregiver tells us that a patients’ care is dependent on how well the caregiver is taken care of.

Family Caregivers Alliance and Eldercare Services are excellent organizations to get resource information.

If you’re not able to find one that meets your need, start one, if possible. My church came alongside my husband and I and worked with us to start a Caregivers Survival Series and a support group. Care of the caregiver is vital to good care of the ill person and

a must for the survival of the caregiver.

Kate Gong

Berkeley

Give it all away

Editor:

The Supreme Court has now allowed Bible study and other religious activity to take place in the public schools.

Why not go the logical whole hog?

The public schools hold classes Monday through Friday; weekends most are deserted.

The holy Sabbaths of Christians and Jews occur on Saturday and Sunday, when communal religious services are held in their churches and synagogues. Monday through Friday their sanctuaries stand virtually empty. (Of regularly spaced communal religious services in mosques, I am ashamed to say, I am too ignorant to speak.)

Why not abandon churches and synagogues (mosques too?) and fully utilize our public school buildings by holding the nation’s communal religious services in them? Perhaps as worshippers the public could see to it that all our public school buildings be kept in much better condition than we arrange for as taxpayers!

The consequently abandoned formerly religious edifices could give around-the -clock shelter to the impoverished, usually in more convenient locations than where our present jerry-rigged patchwork of “homeless shelters” are hidden away in half-deserted blighted neighborhoods or abandoned military posts, far from job opportunity and public transportation, to mollify sanctimonious NIMBY’S.

A fantastic idea? Yes, but doesn’t it make sense?

Judith Segard Hunt

Berkeley

Beth El’s good works deserves public support

Editor:

The City Council's public hearing on Congregation Beth El's new synagogue amazed me. Though I have belonged to the congregation for more than 20 years, I didn't know, until that night, the full story of what Beth El does for its members and for the community.

Nearly 400 people came to the hearing and stayed late into the night to thank and support Beth El. You couldn't help noticing that these speakers looked like Berkeley itself - young, old, and in-between; of many different religions and races; from every neighborhood in the city.

Some critics of the project, nearly all of whom live near the new site, spoke too. They were a very homogeneous group, and they didn't mention people much. They talked mainly about creeks and trees.

As someone who has not been close to the situation, but who listened carefully that night, it struck me that the congregation, despite its focus on services to people, is also doing more to restore Codornices Creek and to protect trees on the site than anyone has done before.

The questions I was left with were: Is Codornices Creek the real agenda of the opponents of this project?

If so, why haven't they done more to take care of the creek in their neighborhood over the years?

Why did they wait until Beth El bought the property to wage a campaign to open a part of the creek that is 27 feet underground?

Why didn't they find a way to buy the property themselves or persuade the city buy it if they wanted it to be open space?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but what I do know now is that Congregation Beth El has an outstanding plan to take care of people - and creeks and trees.

Jeffrey Brand

Berkeley

Beth El needs more space for its good works

The Daily Planet received this letter addressed to the Mayor and City Council:

I am writing in strong support of the effort to build a new synagogue for the Beth El congregation at 1301 Oxford.

The congregation is engaged in many good works in the community and deserves to have a larger space as the number of members and their activities have increased.

It is clear the congregation has made great efforts to meet the requirements of the Zoning Commission and the wishes of the near neighbors.

As an urban sociologist, I am well aware of the need to preserve truly beautiful buildings, major historical sites, and important open space available for public use.

There is nothing of that kind at the site chosen by Beth El for their new building.

Also as an urban sociologist, I know that all cities must evolve and grow, neighborhoods shift, and institutions expand and contract if the city is to continue to be a live entity.

It seems to me that the opposition to this new building and grounds is a form of trying to reverse this inevitable process in a very destructive way.

As a member of the Pastoral Council at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church I am also aware of the difficulty religious communities in Berkeley have in making any changes to their plant or grounds no matter how much these changes may contribute to the common good of the community.

It does not seem a practice designed to enhance the social and physical health of the city.

I hope you will consider the extensive efforts made by Beth El to satisfy the Zoning Commission and disregard the efforts of the Landmarks Commission to prevent this synagogue from being built.

Mary Anna C. Colwell

Berkeley

The creation of a martyr

Editor:

One might be opposed to the death penalty as a matter of conscience, but still consider it for bosses and program directors of the electronic media.

They bombarded the public with messages that have greatly contributed to confusion, frustration, anger and paranoia that have become common among the population.

It took the Pope many years to create over 400 new Saints but the media created the biggest martyr of the century in just a few days!

Kent Nagano comes back to conduct the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in a program that nicely reflects his career.

The concert begins with a world premiere of Kurt Rohde's “Five Pieces for Orchestra,” then presents Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2, a difficult and introspective work from the middle of the 20th century, and concludes with Johannes Brahms’ first symphony, a workhorse from the standard repertory of Romanticism.

When Nagano was first becoming prominent, he was considered a maverick who focused on esoteric postmodern compositions.

He gradually moved back through compositions of the earlier decades of the 20th century and eventually developed a friendly relationship with the masters of the classical and romantic traditions.

Now it is common for Nagano to include a mainstream work or two in a concert which showcases a world premiere by a living composer.

Audiences have grown to trust Nagano’s taste in selecting new music, and recently they have learned to relish his interpretations of familiar works.

He is among the finest of our young generation of composers, even from an international viewpoint. He has an individual voice. His way of expressing himself is emotional and dramatic without being melodramatic or sentimental, so the feelings of his music are deep and heartfelt.”

Rohde writes, “Beginning with a relatively simple and direct opening movement, the piece evolves to more involved and intricate movements towards the end.

There is a progression of intensity over the course of the piece.”

Although Shostakovich is well-known and several of his symphonies and piano concertos are played often, this violin concerto is under-appreciated and rarely heard.

Perhaps few soloists feel capable of such contrasting styles of gypsy indulgence and heroic strength.

Stuart Canin is clearly capable of these extremes and enjoys rising to the requirements of this famously difficult piece.

Nagano said, “There are lots of master violinists, but Canin shows hunger and curiosity. He is always seeking more. I have known Canin for over 25 years and he still becomes more and more fascinating to me.”

Nagano notes that Shostakovich’s second violin concerto is “enigmatic, private, full of irony and personal reflection. It has a different character than the first concerto, which is more dramatic and more popular.”

It is clearly a good match for Canin’s mature virtuosity.

In the Brahms’ symphony, Nagano keeps tempos brisk and insists that the strings play with certain attacks and a crisp sense of line.

This allows the wind and brass parts to be heard distinctly, instead of merely contributing to a hazy cluster of thick chords, as is the common fare with Brahms. This approach yields more muscle than mush. Brahms worked many years on this symphony before he considered it worthy of being performed, because of the shadow cast by Beethoven’s works in the same genre.

Its finale is every bit as uplifting as the conclusion of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, as the audience is lead to a jubilant resolution of the conflicts which have been explored in the previous three movements.

Although the vigorous concluding melody does not have a text, many listeners will be singing or humming the theme for days to come.

Nagano’s career has taken him away from his native California for long periods of time as he has held important conducting positions for orchestras in London, Manchester, Berlin and Lyon.

His calendar is also full of guest conducting jobs.

It is fortunate he has remained loyal to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, where he has been music director and conductor since 1978. Yet Nagano asserts “I never left Berkeley. I grew up and went to school in the bay area. I had the privilege of being given the music directorship of the Berkeley Symphony when I was still quite young. I love California. Berkeley is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The combination of people makes it a unique vortex of energy.”

About his lengthy tenure with the BSO Nagano said, “Music making takes on new dimensions when you let a relationship grow with time.

Twenty-three years is a long time, but certain aspects of the relationship need time to deepen.” The energy and enthusiasm generated by the orchestra attests to the success of this ongoing relationship.

This will be the final performance of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra this season. Next season's schedule will be announced during the program.

OAKLAND – Members of the organizations involved in the campaign for a just punishment for Berkeley landlord Lakireddy Bali Reddy reacted positively to U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong’s decision Tuesday to sentence the Berkeley landlord to eight years in prison.

“The sentence today is a powerful moment for the women and the families victimized by Mr. Reddy, who now stands exposed, humiliated and shamed,” said Chic Dabby of Narika, a Berkeley-based South Asian women’s organization.

Reddy pleaded guilty last March to illegally bringing girls form India for sex and

cheap labor. In exchange, prosecutors recommended a maximum sentence of six and one-half years in prison - a punishment Narika and other advocacy groups considered too lenient. In the past few weeks, they sent Armstrong dozens of letters urging her to reject the plea bargain and impose a harsher sentence on Reddy. To many of them, Tuesday’s decision was therefore a victory.

“We are extremely happy,” said Nithya Ramanathan, a member of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA) after the hearing. “We feel that the judge really recognized the severity of the case. By inflicting a (more severe) sentence she demonstrated that this kind of behavior is not going to be accepted.”

Reddy’s victims also expressed satisfaction with the sentence. At the end of the hearing, attorney Jayashri Srikantiah from the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project read a statement on behalf of two victims the foundation represents in a possible civil lawsuit against Reddy.

“We are deeply gratified by today’s event. Nothing can compensate us for what (Reddy) did but we are satisfied that he has finally been brought to justice and that he’s going to prison,” according to the statement.

Only one organization, Women Against Sexual Slavery, expressed discontent towards the judge’s decision. “This is absolutely not justice,” said Diana E.H. Russell, leader of the organization. “He’s not even being prosecuted for the things he needs to be prosecuted for.” Russell was against the settlement because it means Reddy will not have to face charges for crimes such as rape or labor violations.

During the day, other members of Women Against Sexual Slavery, representatives of ASATA, a few Berkeley residents as well as City Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Linda Maio quietly demonstrated at the entrance of the courthouse. They distributed documentation about the case and held colorful signs. Some of them had the form of a woman’s profile and read “Reddy = sex Slaver” or “The money talks and Reddy walks.”

A Superior Court judge has ruled that three commissioners can sue the city for reinstatement of their full authority on the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The commissioners filed a suit naming the city and LPC Chair Burton Edwards, because of an Oct. 21 opinion by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque that alleged a conflict of interest related to the commissioners’ affiliation with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

Last November Albuquerque instructed Edwards not to acknowledge commissioners Becky O’Malley, Lesley Emmington-Jones, Carrie Olson and Doug Morse’s comments or votes on the controversial proposal for a synagogue and school at 1301 Oxford St. The proposal was before the LPC because of the property’s status as a city landmark.

Three commissioners are challenging Albuquerque’s opinion and the fourth, Morse, is not participating in the suit for undisclosed reasons.

According to the commissioners’ petition, the suit seeks a direction from the Alameda Superior Court to allow the commissioners to participate fully on the LPC without restrictions. The suit does not seek monetary damages.

The June 15 decision, by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Judith Ford, overruled Albuquerque’s assertion that there was no basis for the commissioners’ suit. Ford’s ruling came one day after hearing arguments from Albuquerque and the commissioners’ attorney, Antonio Rossman.

“Our motion, which was to get the complaint dismissed on its face value, was denied,” Albuquerque said. “But the decision doesn’t go to the merits of the case.”

Rossman said the next step will be a hearing, likely to be scheduled in late summer.

Albuquerque said in her Oct. 31 opinion that the four commissioners had a conflict of interest because of their association with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. Three of the commissioners are on the board of directors and the fourth is paid staff.

The opinion said the conflict arose from a letter written by BAHA President Sarah Wikander on BAHA stationery that criticized the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Oxford Street development. Wikander said in the letter that the report did not adequately take historical aspects of the site into consideration. Albuquerque said in her opinion that Wikander’s letter represented a prejudgement of the project on the part of all BAHA’s directors and therefore caused a conflict of interest on the part of the four commissioners who have ties to BAHA.

Edwards said the issue is an important one and he’s anxious for a quick decision. “I would welcome the earliest decision possible so the commission can settle this question of impartiality.”

Albuquerque issued a number of opinions in the last year that have effected the duties of commissioners because of conflicts of interest. The former chair of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, Gordon Wozniack, was asked not to participate in any issues related to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he is employed and another former CEAC chair, John Selawsky, was forced to resign the commission because of a conflict of interest over his duties as an elected director of the Board of Education.

O’Malley said that what’s at stake in the suit is whether people who are nominated to commissions in Berkeley can be active participants in public life.

“The option is to have city commissions made up of ‘political eunuchs,’ to quote California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk in a similar case,” O’Malley said. “What he meant by that is commissioners who aren’t active, have no opinions or background in related fields.”

Eighth graders at Martin Luther King Jr., Middle School know when they walk into English teacher Rachel Garlin’s classroom that they could be in for a show.

“We’ll ask her to sing a song because it like relaxes you a little bit,” said Theresa Fortune, who had Garlin as her first period English teacher this past year.

A 27-year-old singer/songwriter who uses long weekends and teacher holidays to tour folk music venues throughout the western United States, believes music has an important place in the classroom – particularly a middle school English classroom.

Garlin said to begin with eighth graders love music. For them, devotion to favorite musical styles and groups is a way to express their growing independence, she said.

“It’s an area where they can be really independent,” Garlin said.

“They can be independent of the parents; independent of their peers.”

As an English teacher, Garlin tries to capitalize on this universal love of music by showing students the close relationship between song writing and other forms of writing.

“Anything you write can be put into song,” Garlin said. “A lot of song writing is really just recording events and putting it to music.”

To drive the point home, Garlin worked with eighth graders last fall to compose a song that would express a theme of particular importance to the school community: the daily struggle to live up to the ideals espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

At King Middle School, everyone from the principal on down takes seriously the fact that their school is named after the famed leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Garlin said. Each year there is an award ceremony where students are honored for living up King’s ideals of courage, compassion and equality.

“From the sixth grade, (King students) know that award recipients are people who show compassion and empathy; who make an effort to be inclusive in their social lives; who show some leadership potential,” Garlin said.

Her students agreed.

“I feel like a lot of schools don’t try to live out what they’re named after,” said eighth grader Martina Miles, one of the students involved in the song writing project. “Our school really tries.”

But as the students set out to write the song, Garlin had them take a hard look at their lives at King to assess just how well this community of students and teachers lives up to Dr. King’s most cherished ideals.

Garlin composed the chorus of the song as a question:

“Dr. King, do you see your dream?

Dr. King, does the freedom ring?

Do we take every chance we see

To create true equality?”

Working with Garlin, the students filled in the other verses to the song, reflecting the divide they perceive between King’s ideals and the day to day reality of middle school life.

“It’s something I can see on the school yard,” said King eighth grader Jack Nicholas. “Once the bell rings, people are like, ‘screw you.’”

“I’ve had days at school where I like cried because someone made me so mad,” said eighth grader Bina Morris.

Writing the song gave them an opportunity to capture these emotions, the students said, and to share them with the rest of their community in a way that would be heard.

“It’s a lot different when people stand up there and sing because people will listen,” Miles said. “They won’t just turn their mind off to it.”

A self-selected group of half a dozen students, including Fortune, Miles, Nicholas and Morris, performed the song – “Equality” – at the mid-year award ceremony honoring those who live up to King’s ideals, and at the schools graduation ceremony last week. Both times the audience was encouraged to sing along.

“It really helping kids develop ideals and values,” Garlin said. “They get a strong message that education is about learning how to communicate effectively; learning how to clearly express yourself in a way that gives others respect...”

Garlin was so impressed with the graduation performance that she invited the students to perform “Equality” with her this Thursday, as she headlines for the first at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse – a popular traditional music venue in Berkeley.

“The song lends itself to a group performance,” Garlin said. “Especially with kids who represent the diversity of our school and city.”

Garlin performs at Freight & Salvage Thursday, June 21, beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15.50 if purchased in advance, or $16.50 at the door. Freight & Salvage is located at 1111 Addison Street. Call 548-1761 for tickets.

AC Transit, along with Berkeley officials held an unveiling ceremony Tuesday for the new informational displays to be installed at major bus stops throughout Berkeley.

The new postings contain information on the schedules and routes for buses that stop at the ten stops that received the add-on Tuesday, along with fare information and general transit information written in English, Spanish and Chinese.

The 10 a.m. event was led by AC Transit Director of Marketing and Communications Jaimie Levin, and included short speeches by Mayor Shirley Dean, AC Transit Director Joe Wallace and City Council member and former member of the AC Transit Board of Directors, Miriam Hawley.

“This is a big step forward for AC Transit’s program to improve information at the point of travel,” said Levin. “This program will work not only for the regular riders, but most importantly for intending riders. We think this is going to be very well-accepted by our riders and the public in general.”

Dean was ecstatic about the program. “This is wonderful. I can’t tell you how much these little things can really help change people’s habits,” she said. “The change is going to be very encouraging.”

City officials received funding from Panoramic Interests, a local property development firm, to launch the program. Each of the displays will reportedly cost about $400 to install and maintain.

“The displays are made to be durable and we have to buy spare parts,” said Levin. “Our responsibility is not to just put this up and leave it, but to maintain it. We expect to get a significant increase in funding from UC Berkeley’s Class Pass program.”

Class Pass is an AC Transit program that allows UC Berkeley students unlimited rides on all AC Transit buses and many university shuttles free of charge for a semester. All pay $18 per semester for the pass, but not everyone opts to use it.

The ceremony was held on the corner of University Avenue and Grant Street across from a property owned by Panoramic Interests’ Patrick Kennedy who was scheduled to participate in the ceremony, but was unable to make it.

Chris Hudson, a representative from Panoramic Interests, was able to speak at the ceremony, however. “We think that this is a critical part of what we try to do here in Berkeley,” he said. “We want to make sue that the people have quality public transportation as a real alternative to having everyone drive everywhere. We’re happy to be able to help.”

After the ceremony an AC Transit maintenance crew went out to install additional info holders along University Avenue.

Many riders are pleased to see the changes, but still hope to see more done. “I’m happy that they’re doing this,” said Bus Riders’ Union member Charlie Betcher, “Hopefully the service will be more reliable.”

“I don’t like them, they don’t have the right information,” said Raul Skolnick, while waiting for a bus at a stop with one of the new postings. “They’ve got potential though, it’s a good idea. It has to be accurate and it has to be useful information.”

“I think it’s terrific that it’s written in more than one language,” said another rider. “It’s a big improvement on asking the bus driver where the bus goes, but it could be better.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Coastal California slipped out of reach of all but the well-to-do in the ’90s as demand pushed house prices up and the poor and middle-income out. The problem was that households boomed, by 10.8 percent, but housing didn’t, growing only 9.2 percent, recent U.S. Census data show. At the same time, healthier seniors hung on to their homes, more people lived alone and immigrants entered the housing market.

The result is a state where the coast is the preserve of those with the most, and the squeeze is on all over, defying demographers who had predicted a slack housing market as relatively smaller Generation X began buying homes from the Baby Boom set.

“We have this enormous housing crisis,” said Doug Shoemaker, policy and program director for the National Nonprofit Housing Association of Northern California.

Vacancy rates plunged over the last decade. Only 3.7 percent of all rental units were vacant, compared to 5.9 percent in 1990. Looking at homes, the rate dropped from 2 percent to 1.4 percent.

Some of those who couldn’t pony up for mega-mortgages doubled up instead. Average household size grew from 2.79 to 2.87 and the number of households including relatives outside the immediate family grew by 37 percent, from 2.08 million in 1990 to 2.85 million in 2000.

The number of traditional families — a married couple with children under 18 — also grew, by 12.6 percent statewide.

Not along the coast, though. Thirteen of the 15 counties strung along California’s 900-or-so miles of Pacific splendor came in below the 12.6 rate, some well below. The remotely beautiful far northern coastal counties of Humboldt, Mendocino and Del Norte, for instance, showed a decrease in those types of families.

In San Francisco, where $524,000 was the median house price in February, only 12.2 percent of its households consisted of traditional families, the lowest rate for a county in the state.

The ’90s was the decade where many realized the American dream of home ownership meant giving up living anywhere close to the California dream of surf and sand.

“Families have gone inland,” said John Landis, professor of city and regional planning at the University of California.

It was basically all about money.

“Ten years ago, a middle income family with one wage earner could probably find an owner-occupied house probably within five miles of the (San Francisco) Bay or the coast,” Landis said.

With a regional median house price of $394,000, houses here now take two good incomes or one great one.

The same phenomenon occurred in landlocked Silicon Valley, although there the trend came courtesy of a new wave of technology jobs. Median house prices in Santa Clara County passed the half-million mark in 2000. “I can’t afford to live here. I’m not a dot.com millionaire,” said Michael Roberriques, who moved four years ago to the Central California community of Los Banos. Roberriques now commutes 2 hours, 15 minutes each way to his job in San Jose. On the other hand, he paid $125,000 for the small single-family home he was looking for.

In Corte Madera, a small city in ultra-expensive Marin County just north of San Francisco, only three members of the 20-member fire department live in the county. Not the city, the county. The pay’s good, around $60,000, but it doesn’t come close to covering the mortgage in a town where the median house price is $600,000.

Marin County, home to the rich and famous such as director George Lucas, isn’t typical, but it faces the same obstacles to building more housing as the rest of the state — environmental regulations limiting development, builders going for high-end, more profitable houses, and a tax system that encourages cities to go after retail developments, such as big-box discount stores that produce taxable sales.

Charles Rynerson, a demographer with the San Diego Association of Governments, looked at the reshuffling of California’s population and found an interesting trend: Population was falling in established neighborhoods of single-family homes and rising in areas where there were more apartments and condos.

“It was as if the households that were built for families were being occupied by singles and couples and the housing that was built for singles and couples was being occupied by families,” he said.

Even formerly affordable places, like Oakland on the San Francisco Bay, climbed into the high-price bracket.

“It’s really pretty challenging,” says Oakland elementary school teacher Charles Wilson, who’d like to live in the city where he teaches but has been renting in San Francisco.

Wilson and his partner make around $90,000 together, a good income but one that is quickly dwarfed by a market where the median house price is more than $200,000.

“The irony is that anywhere else in the country we’re actually upper class. We’re pushing the six-figure income for two people. Here it’s not,” he said.

There was one surprising number among the flurry of census statistics.

The ratio of homeownership to renters increased slightly in California, with 56.9 percent of homes owner-occupied in 2000, compared to 55.6 percent in 1990. However, that was much lower than the national average of about 67 percent and experts said the uptick could be due to a number of people in the 20-35 age group – potential renters – moving out of state.

In their place, new homebuyers emerged in California, including immigrants and single parents, many of whom used new, low-down-payment loans and other programs to get into the market. Some buyers were coming up with new strategies, such as immigrants buying houses together and young people squeezing in extra roommates.

“All of a sudden what’s beginning to take place is you have an influx of people coming in with families utilizing ... housing stock more effectively,” said Greg Schmid, director of the 10-year forecast project for the Menlo Park-based Institute for the Future.

For people on the bottom of the economic ladder, plunging vacancy rates mean grim measures.

In San Jose, people are renting garages, said Shoemaker of the nonprofit housing association. He’s seen classic Victorian three-bedroom apartments in San Francisco “and there’s a family in each bedroom.”

Long-distance commuter Roberriques looks at the real estate listings in quiet disbelief. His father bought a house in Santa Clara, near San Jose, for $54,000 in 1971. It’s now worth about $700,000. “That is literally outrageous when you consider that in other parts of the country $700,000 would buy you 10,000 acres of land,” he said. “It’s just outrageous. There’s no rational explanation that I can see.”

WASHINGTON — President Bush ordered federal agencies Tuesday to help states locate and use community services – rather than institutions – for people with disabilities.

“It is compassionate, it is needed, and it is now the federal official policy of my administration,” he said.

The president ventured across the Potomac River to the Pentagon to highlight government efforts to accommodate disabled workers. He browsed a display of specialized computer technology – keyboards that ease carpal tunnel syndrome, voice-recognition systems for those who cannot use their hands, talking computers for the blind – developed by the Defense Department for some 20,000 of its employees and now commercially available.

Bush bent over a keyboard and typed a message to deaf student intern Jennifer McLaughlin, who was monitoring the Internet from a Defense Department facility miles away.

“We will treat Americans with disabilities as people to be respected, rather than problems to be confronted,” Bush said afterward.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said 21st century security threats make it necessary for the military “seek out the most capable people we can find, including the many talented Americans with disabilities.”

“And, in this era of continuing advancing technology, there are possibilities to harness their talent in ways that were previously inconceivable,” Rumsfeld said.

The president’s executive order follows a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that the Americans With Disabilities Act requires states, whenever possible, to place individuals with mental disabilities in community settings rather than institutions.

Bush said he wants his administration to make sure the decision is fully enforced and to “ensure that no one is unjustly institutionalized.”

His order applies broadly to services for all disabled people, not just those with mental disabilities.

This week, a new accessibility law sponsored by Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., begins to

take effect.

As of Thursday, all new information on federal Web sites must be accessible to disabled people. Starting next Monday, new electronic and information technologies bought by federal agencies will have to meet accessibility standards.

Brilliant graphics on the Internet make reading tough for the visually impaired, Bush said. Many Web sites lack closed captions for video images, and complex keyboard commands often keep disabled users from being able to “tap a computer’s full potential.”

“As a result, computer usage and Internet access for people with disabilities is half that of people without disabilities,” Bush said.

“Researchers here at the Department of Defense and at other agencies throughout the federal government and in the private sector are developing solutions to these problems. ... I’m committed to bringing that technology to users as quickly as possible.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was accused Tuesday of rampant discrimination against female employees in a federal lawsuit against the nation’s largest private employer.

The suit, which seeks to represent as many as 500,000 current and former women workers, claims the company “systematically discriminates against its women employees,” said Brad Seligman, one of several attorneys on the case.

If granted class-action status, the suit would become the nation’s largest gender-based discrimination case against a private employer. The plaintiffs are seeking to change the company’s alleged discriminatory practices. They have not specified how much money they are seeking.

Wal-Mart, which also operates Sam’s Club, denied the allegations.

“Wal-Mart does not condone discrimination of any kind,” said Bill Wertz, a spokesman for the Bentonville, Ark.-based chain. “Women hold positions of significant responsibility at Wal-Mart.”

The suit, filed in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court, alleges there are nearly double the number of women in management at competing retail stores and that male Wal-Mart workers get higher pay than women for the same duties. It says the retailing giant passes over women for promotions and training, and retaliates against women who register complaints.

Three-fourths of the company’s one million employees are female but women hold less than one-third of managerial positions.

Micki Miller Earwood, a former personnel manager at an Urbana, Ohio, Wal-Mart, said she recently was terminated after complaining about what she said was discriminatory treatment.

“Wal-Mart is not a place I would ever hope for my daughter to work at,” said Earwood, one of six plaintiffs in the suit.

Wertz said women are well represented at the company – the chief executive of walmart.com is a woman, as is one of three executive vice presidents of Sam’s Club, he said. Women also hold high positions in the company’s labor relations and legal departments.

He also said that Wal-Mart does not count store department managers as management, while other retailers might to inflate their figures.

Betty Dukes, another plaintiff, has been working at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg for seven years. She said she has only ascended to cashier while her similarly qualified male counterparts have moved substantially higher up the ladder.

“There’s a great divide between the men and women at Wal-Mart,” Dukes said.

WASHINGTON — Housing construction dipped in May but remains at a healthy level, further evidence of the industry’s resilience in the face of a faltering national economy.

The number of new housing units builders began work on last month dipped by 0.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.62 million, following a strong 2.3 percent increase in April, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Even with May’s decline, which was smaller than many analysts were expecting, the level of housing starts remained solid, economists said.

“Things are still cooking along,” said David Seiders, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. Taking a look at quarterly patterns, however, construction activity appears to be flattening, he said.

“For builders, flattening at this level is just dandy, but for the economy, construction activity going forward might not provide as much of a kick to economic growth as it has,” Seiders said.

On Wall Street, unease about weak company profits ruled the market. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 48.71 at 10,596.67, despite an earlier gain of 94 points.

Even as the rest of the economy has slowed markedly since the second half of last year, housing activity has remained stable, thanks to low mortgage rates and falling interest rates in general.

In May, the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.14 percent, compared with 8.52 percent for the same month a year ago.

The strength of the housing and construction markets has been a main force keeping the struggling economy afloat.

“Housing ... is clearly providing a shield against full-fledged recession, rather like a levee protecting against the rising flood of manufacturing layoffs and stock market declines,” said First Union chief economist David Orr.

To stave off recession, the Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates five times this year, driving borrowing costs down to the lowest point in seven years.

Many analysts believe Fed policy-makers will cut rates again at the end of their two-day meeting June 27. Some predict policy-makers will cut by another half point, while others believe they will opt for a more moderate quarter-point move.

In May, construction of single-family homes slipped by 0.2 percent to an annual rate of 1.29 million. Starts of apartments, condos, townhouses and other multifamily housing fell by 1.5 percent to a rate of 331,000.

By region, total housing starts declined by 28.3 percent in the Northeast to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 132,000 and were down by 1.9 percent in the South to a rate of 724,000. But in the Midwest, starts rose by 15.8 percent to a rate of 344,000, and in the West they increased 2.9 percent to a rate of 422,000.

Housing permits, a good barometer of current demand, rose by 2.1 percent in May to an annual rate of 1.62 million.

While consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of all economic activity, has held up fairly well during the economic slowdown, some analysts worry that could change if the labor market seriously weakens in the coming months. That could force consumers to sharply cut back on spending, tipping the economy into recession.

Even with this fear, other economists are hopeful that aggressive rate-cutting by the Fed, along with tax-cut refunds, will pave the way for a recovery later this year.

Opinion

Editorials

A federal appeals court has upheld its February decision that Napster contributes to copyright infringement and must remove protected works from its song-swapping service.

In a Friday ruling made public Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it would not revisit the three-judge decision with 11 judges.

The court’s ruling leaves the U.S. Supreme Court as the remaining legal arena for Napster Inc. The Redwood City-based company, embroiled in litigation from the recording industry, acknowledged that chances were slim the circuit court would rehear the case.

In February, the three-judge circuit panel upheld a federal judge’s order demanding that Napster remove copyright works from its system. Napster argued that it was not facilitating copyright infringement, a position the appeals panel strongly rejected.

Napster is now removing songs from its service, an undertaking that is proving difficult as users continue to resurrect songs killed from the system.

“As far as we are able to tell, a lot of our stuff is available on Napster in some shape, form or the other,” said Russell Frackman, an attorney for the recording industry.

But as finding songs on the service gets more difficult, fans are abandoning the service.

A recent analysis by the Internet research firm Webnoize found that Napster use has plunged 41 percent since the online company added song-screening technology to begin complying with orders to remove copyright works.

Frackman said the Recording Industry Association of America is still pursuing a federal court trial in the case and will seek an unknown amount of damages for copyright infringement from Napster. Also Monday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards Oscars once a year to movie standouts, filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit against Napster.

The lawsuit accused Napster of allowing its users to download live, copyrighted music performed on the March 25 broadcast of the awards show. Artists who performed include Garth Brooks, Bob Dylan, Faith Hill and Sting.

That suit is nearly identical to one filed in March against Napster by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which produces the music industry’s Grammy Awards.

Despite Monday’s legal developments, Napster is moving toward legitimacy. Three weeks ago, the former music industry bad boy said it struck a distribution deal with three record labels that are expected soon to launch an online music subscription service.

SAN FRANCISCO – The largest single-state jackpot in U.S. history has a winner.

A single ticket was sold with all six winning numbers — three, 22, 43, 44 and 45 and Mega number eight. That ticket was bought at Union Avenue Liquors in San Jose, Calif., lottery officials said. The winner has 180 days to claim the record jackpot.

Liquor store owner Alex Wang, 56, will receive about $705,000 — or one-half of one percent of the total jackpot — if the winning ticket is confirmed, said lottery spokesman Sid Ramirez.

“I couldn’t believe it, but it looks like it’s true,” Wang said. Wang, who moved to the U.S. from Taiwan in 1970, has owned the liquor store for 27 years.

He has no immediate plans for the money he won for selling the winning ticket at his store, although he said he may buy a new home.

“First, I’ll probably put it in the bank.”

Ramirez and other lottery officials were at Wang’s store Sunday to tie up some legal loose ends.

“As part of our security system that’s been in place ever since the lottery began, we take the (lottery ticket) machine to make sure there has been no tampering or malfunctions of sorts,” Ramirez said.

He said lottery officials will return to Wang’s store in three to four weeks with his check. Officials will then give Wang special banners to hang at his store saying “this store made a million dollar winner.”

By 7 p.m. Saturday, ticket sales boomed and the record prize grew to $141 million. Sales were about $43 million Saturday alone, with 84,000 tickets sold every minute in the last hours before the 7:58 p.m. drawing — this despite the fact that the chance of winning was one in 41 million.

The huge prize built up during the past month as nine drawings came and went without a winner.

The largest previous single-state lottery prize before the current record jackpot was $118.8 million in 1991, that also in California. The jackpot has exceeded $100 million only three times in the entire history of lotto.

Ramirez said this winning jackpot raised $80 million for public schools in the state.

If no one comes forward to claim the record-breaking jackpot, that money will also be handed over to public education.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Northeast Quadrant Science and Safety Projects is now available for public review. A public hearing on the report will be held July 9 at 105 North Gate Hall at 7 p.m.

Outdated and seismically unsafe Stanley Hall and Davis Hall North are slated to be replaced with new buildings to house interdisciplinary research facilities, according to a UC Berkeley Office of Physical and Environmental Planning press release.

The projects will also include construction of a new low-rise structure north of Soda Hall, seismic reinforcement of the Naval Architecture Building, and removal of recreational facilities at the top of the Lower Hearst Parking Structure to make way for more parking.

The DEIR finds significant “unavoidable” impacts – construction noise and loss of recreation facilities – that will result from the approximately 325,000 square feet of developed space that NEQSS projects will create.

The Draft EIR is available at the UC Berkeley Physical and Environmental Planning Office in Room 300, 1936 University Avenue, or at the Berkeley Public Library downtown branch at 2121 Allston Way.

James Joyce Conference and Festival begins July 2

The weeklong 2001 James Joyce Conference and Festival will officially begin at 9 a.m. on July 2.

This year’s event is sponsored by the UC Berkeley English Department and the Irish Arts Foundation, and takes place primarily at UC Berkeley’s Clark Kerr campus. James Joyce conferences have occurred around the world annually since 1962, making them the longest running academic conferences devoted to a single author.

Joyce’s works (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners) have an international following of readers who claim his writing is life-transforming, according to a UC Berkeley Department of English press release. The conference theme this year is “Extreme Joyce/Reading on the Edge” and will explore Joyce’s revolutionary literary style and the ways in which it challenges readers.

The conference and festival provide an opportunity for those who are not familiar with Joyce, or have found his works too difficult or intimidating, to learn more about the author.

Drop-in panels will take place all day July 2, 3, 5 and 6, with topics ranging from “Ulysses in Overview” to “Geopolitical Joyce: Some Joycean Border-Crossings.” The conference is $25 per day for the general public and $15 per day for students and will take place at 2601 Warring Street.

The festival portion of the week will begin at 8 p.m. on July 2 with Leopold’s Fancy giving a free performance of Irish music at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave.

On July 3 at 7:30 p.m. dramatic interpretations of Joyce’s work will be performed at the Krutch Theater on the Clark Kerr Campus, also free and open to the public.

For more information about the conference, call the Irish Arts Foundation at 642-2754.

Berkeley resident

earns high school award

Adam Stern of Berkeley has received an Excellence Award for academic achievement during his junior year at Hyde School in Bath, Maine. Hyde is a character-based school which emphasizes attitude and effort more highly than aptitude and talent, according to a Hyde School press release. The growing school now includes a campus in Woodstock, Connecticut and the Hyde Leadership Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.

SAN DIEGO — Launching a week’s worth of protests tied to a biotechnology convention, activists entered a supermarket Thursday and slapped warning labels on shelves they say were filled with foods made with genetically-engineered crops.

“People don’t know they are eating this stuff,” said Ama Marston, 26, of San Francisco, before placing a yellow warning label below boxes of Frosted Flakes. The label warned fans of Tony the Tiger: “Genetically Engineered Food – Hazardous for kids, health and the environment.”

Across town, San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy joined a number biotech executives to praise an industry that saves lives – kicking off the BIO 2001 convention, which officially begins Sunday.

“Biotechnology is a big word for hope,” said BIO President Carl Feldbaum.

The two events about an hour apart amounted to a long-distance debate over an industry taking center stage next week when 15,000 people and thousands of protesters are expected to converge on the San Diego Convention Center.

The convention will be a showcase for an industry that claims to benefit humanity with new cures for diseases and medicines that ease the suffering of millions. Outside, thousands of protesters are planning marches, demonstrations and other colorful, telegenic actions to drive home the message that biotech firms are introducing potentially harmful, genetically engineered products into homes and farms, placing profits above people.

Police plan a major presence throughout downtown.

There have been mounting fears that the protests may turn violent, but Thursday’s half-hour event at the Albertson’s supermarket was peaceful. The dozen or so activists were careful to avoid defacing merchandise, labeling only the shelves. They left the store moments before police arrived.

No arrests were made. Supermarket employees told police they would not press charges.

Montie Robinson happened to be shopping with his mother for his favorite cereal, Frosted Flakes at the moment the Greenpeace activists were busy attaching labels, with a gaggle of reporters watching.

“I don’t know what’s in all our food,” he said. “No one is telling me whether I should eat it.”

At the mayor’s conference, four people with life-threatening diseases stepped forward to say that treatments pioneered by the biotech industry helped save their lives.

Larry Kincaid, an attorney from East San Diego County, said he is living with a rare form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma with the help of a drug produced by Ligand Pharmaceutical Co.

“A year ago I was planning my funeral. Now, I’m looking forward to retiring and spending time with my grandchildren,” Kincaid said.

“This kind of technology gives us a future. It gives our children a future.”

The three others were an AIDS survivor taking a drug discovered by a pharmaceutical company, a man with lupus who is participating in a clinical trial and a breast cancer survivor who showed her support for firms pioneering new cancer therapies.

“They are why this conference is important – not just to San Diegans but to people around the world,” Murphy said.

Protesters are holding their own convention, called Beyond Biodevastation 2001, beginning Friday. Organizers have issued pledges promising all events will follow a strict code of non-violence.

Police, however, aren’t taken any chances. Officers have been training for months to deal with protesters who plan on being disruptive or violent. The biggest concerns are the so-called “black blocs” of masked anarchists who brought mayhem to the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and other areas.

“There will be the heaviest presence of blue uniforms in downtown San Diego that this city has seen in some time,” said police spokesman David Cohen. He declined to provide specifics on weapons or tactics.

As many as 4,000 demonstrators, many from the West Coast, converged on the industry’s conference last year in Boston. San Diego police expect the crowd to be much larger this year.

Officers will move quickly to arrest any demonstrators who block intersections and violate laws and get them off the streets for the duration of the convention, which ends Wednesday.

“We will be very aggressive,” Cohen said. “Our goal is to not let it become a Seattle.”

Vice mayor Maudelle Shirek is having a 90th birthday celebration and 90 people will be taking a minute to share how the councilmember has impacted their lives.

The party is from 2-4 p.m, Saturday at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1900 Hearst Ave.

This extraordinary woman, whose grandparents were slaves in Arkansas, has touched many lives in Berkeley, according to her friend and aide Mike Berkowitz. She has helped people get their first cars, homes and loans when she worked for the Credit Union. Shirek fought for and won funding for the school lunch program at Berkeley High School and is still fighting for the city Youth Center in south Berkeley. She helped get the grant for improving the Adeline Corridor street frontage.

At a time when the city was resistant to hiring people of color, she helped union members and city workers get employment, raises and job protection, Berkowitz said in a press statement. While Shirek is reportedly the oldest city councilmember in California, she still shops and cooks for the seniors at the New Light Senior Center on a daily basis.

Special guests expected at the birthday bash include Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Assemblymember Dion Louise Aroner, Supervisor Keith Carson, plus a host of former and current mayors, councilmembers and other officials.

Food, drink and entertainment for all ages. $25 sliding scale.

RSVP 549-1861. People should call this number to sign up to talk for a minute about their experiences with Shirek.

SAN FRANCISCO — Stanley Mosk, a self-described liberal whose 37-year tenure on the California Supreme Court made him the state’s longest-serving justice, died unexpectedly at his home here Tuesday. He was 88.

One of the nation’s most influential state judges, Mosk authored more than 1,500 opinions, many of them landmark decisions on civil rights, free speech, criminal justice and independent state constitutional grounds.

“This is a sad day for all Californians,” said Gov. Gray Davis in a statement. “We are all the beneficiaries of his extraordinary wisdom and foresight.”

Mosk, who clerks said was at work Monday, was the remaining liberal on the seven-member court. Davis’ aides said it was premature to discuss a replacement.

A lifelong Democrat who was appointed to the court in 1964 by Gov. Pat Brown, Mosk was a leading dissenter on conservative courts of recent years. But he confounded liberals by voting to uphold the state’s parental consent law for minors’ abortions – a majority opinion in 1996 that became a dissent a year later when the court’s membership shifted.

Mosk was a civil rights advocate who established the state attorney general’s civil rights division. As a Los Angeles Superior Court judge overturned a whites-only home deed restriction in 1947, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court voided such covenants nationwide.

Mosk often produced opinions separate from the court majority and was opposed to the death penalty. But he also showed flexibility, and a knack for anticipating political currents and riding them out.

The most striking example was his survival in the 1986 election that swept Rose Bird and two fellow liberals from the court, clearing the way for the first conservative majority in 30 years.

Potential opponents that year were lulled by Mosk’s hints of retirement and unwilling to target a judge with national stature, one who had worked closely with prosecutors as attorney general.

Also, his position on death penalty cases had changed noticeably: previously a consistent member of court majorities that overturned death sentences, Mosk voted to uphold 10 death sentences on a single day in December 1985.

That foreshadowed his 1987 ruling, on the new conservative court, overturning a major pro-defense decision in death cases that he had supported four years earlier. A similar episode happened in 1979, when Mosk changed his vote and upheld a mandatory-sentence law that was causing a political furor.

Stephen Barnett, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who closely follows the high court, said Mosk survived on the bench by knowing “when to trim his sails on a court that’s subject to political pressures.”

Mosk prevailed and remained to provide balance on a court with no other Democratic appointees, sharing his experience with newer justices and continuing a career that shaped California law for decades.

His 1978 ruling banned racial discrimination in jury selection, eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court took the same step nationwide. Courts in many other states have adopted his 1982 ruling, banning testimony by previously hypnotized witnesses, and an innovative 1980 decision allowing suits against an entire industry when marketing made it impossible to tell which brand of a product had caused injury.

Mosk’s 1972 ruling, possibly the most important environmental decision in the court’s history, extended to private developers a law requiring a study of each major project’s likely environmental impact and ways to avoid harm.

He has also been the court’s foremost advocate of interpreting individual rights in the state Constitution more broadly than federal rights. In response, prosecutors sponsored ballot measures in 1982 and 1990 that wiped out dozens of rulings in criminal cases, many by Mosk; but courts in other states have adopted the same doctrine to chart their own course.

But in the 1976 case of Allan Bakke, a white student who challenged a minority admissions program at the University of California at Davis Medical School, Mosk ruled all racial preferences unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and said race could be considered to promote student diversity, but 20 years later Mosk’s conclusion was adopted by California voters in Proposition 209.

Mosk, the target of picketing and student protests after his ruling, said after the passage of 209 that it had been ahead of its time.

He is survived by his wife Kaygey Kash Mosk and son Richard Mitch Mosk. Private services in Los Angeles are pending.